Here's how you can achieve work-life balance in temporary or contract positions in product marketing.

Temporary product marketing positions can offer exciting new experiences, but maintaining work-life balance can be a challenge. Here's how to thrive: Plan your days effectively, prioritizing tasks and setting realistic goals. Strong communication is key - keep your manager informed about workload and deadlines. During gaps between contracts, leverage the downtime. It's a perfect opportunity for professional development, personal projects, or simply recharging for your next adventure.

In my experience, it is not just the urgency of tasks but also their long-term impact on your well-being. Focus on projects aligning with your career goals and values, ensuring that your efforts contribute meaningfully to your professional development while allowing personal fulfillment time.

Priorities are the first thing you need to set if you're in a contractual or temporary product marketing role. There will always be that next deadline to chase or multiple projects screaming for attention. Set your expectations with the client/employer and have a transparent conversation around your bandwidth. Identify what's more critical, high risk, and likely to have a greater impact on the company or its clients, and focus on those things first. Log off your laptop after a certain number of working hours so you can spend time with friends/family/yourself – it will save you from burnout. And learn to say no to requests that aren't important or are ad-hoc. This will encourage your stakeholders to think deeply about what truly matters.

For freelance work, I provide my clients with a Welcome Pack. In it, I have a Ways of Working With Me - section. I share my contact details, working hours and the response time they can expect from me. Plus anything else such as days where I can't take calls, the project process and invoicing details. That way they have everything in one place and know what to expect. Another bonus is that you'll come across as the highly organised professional individual that you are!

And turn off notifications when you're not working - if you're using your personal email for work, stop doing that and get yourself a work one that you only check when you're working.

Try marking out particular day(s) of the week that you keep clear of calls. I find it helpful knowing that on a specific weekday I don't have to dip in and out of calls and can work on a specific project. For me, it can take time to prepare for a call and then follow up on action items afterwards. Having scheduled 'no call - days' allow me to do deep work. I can be more productive because I won't keep getting pulled out my concentration. Try it out!

Especially if you work with multiple companies e.g. on fractional roles, a big help comes from time tracking browser extensions. They keep you accountable for the time you're putting in, make billing easier and also avoid that you put in too many hours

Scheduling breaks to eat, go for a walk, etc. can help ensure you maintain healthy habits and leave enough room in your schedule for balance.

Especially if you work on hourly arrangements, make sure the total amount of hours you're putting in (including finding clients, exploratory calls, refining your portfolio) is as efficient as possible so that you're not putting in endless amounts of time working on refining your website design is that's not absolutely needed - prioritize!

Set expectations about bandwidth and availability with your client - there is often no need to scramble to accommodate huge workloads if you can be transparent from the get-go about your availability.