My working week

Just had a great call with Laura Pike talking all things freelance life and sharing some ideas for things we might do together. In our chat, I shared my current working setup with Laura and realised that I haven't talked about this publicly at all and people may find it interesting. I love this sort of post when other people share them as I am:

a. 'Inquisitive' (let's just call it nosy but I hate the fact that it rhymes with Rosie...). I LOVE to get a scoop on how other people live, and...

b. Really passionate about flexible working

Since coming back from maternity leave a year ago, I've been designing a working pattern that not only fits around family life (I have a toddler and two teenage step daughters) but also allows me some space to think, do hobbies, actually clean my house, etc. Jamie Robinson is co-director at Organised Fun but is also my other half (actually he's my fiancé now as we just got engaged ??) so we have loads of flex in designing our week.

Jamie came back to work with me in OF in December and we've been experimenting with our time and work pattern since then. So we decided that we'd try and work 3.5 days a week each, and largely it's working.

My reflections on this...

1. We made a decision to have less money. Organised Fun works - we do great work and we make a profit. We both take a salary from the business. We know we can earn more if we work more, but at the moment we're OK with being a bit more careful with our cash.

2. We are both happier. We work really hard, but we also have space for keeping the house in relative order, for cooking nice food, for playing with the toddler and chatting to the teens. You get the picture. It's all just a bit calmer than when we both worked more hours

3. We have to say 'no' a lot. We have limited work time that we absolutely can't do everything we want to. We don't spend enough time promoting Organised Fun and telling people about our services. We have an ideas list that is veryyyyy long. Knowing you can't do everything is a tricky one and I struggle with the prioritising of my time.

4. Sometimes we choose to work more than our allocated 3.5 days. If the toddler is sick and off nursery or if we've not had the headspace in the day to get something finished, we will work into the evening. I do my best thinking late at night so sometimes I actively choose to do this, too.

5. We changed up the days a few weeks ago. We were doing 1/2 day each on a Wednesday, sharing the childcare between us (I worked the morning, he worked the afternoon) and it just didn't work. I'd be just getting into my work and it was time to stop, and he'd be thinking about work all morning anyway. So we've switched it around and take it in turns to have a whole Wednesday for work.

I've just thrown these words down before taking my lunch so they're not particularly well thought out. Hopefully it will help people to see that there's alternatives to the typical 5 day week. Otherwise, I hope the fellow nosy people enjoyed the read. Totally recognise our setup isn't 'normal' and we take a big risk working together in OF, but it's working at the moment!