How I... Organize My Work Schedule

Giving you guys a bit of an overview of what it's like managing the inconsistencies that freelance can sometimes bring to the table, and how I try and stay organized and proactive!

0:08 Episode Introduction

0:38 What are my jobs made up from?

1:35 Hours & Workweek

2:26 What happens when it's a slow week?

4:29 Why networking is important

5:02 Countering the inconsistency

6:05 Wrapping Up

Links mentioned in this episode:
Alex Fasulo's "Freelance Fairytales"

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Chapters

• 0:08 Episode Introduction
• 0:38 What are my jobs made up from?
• 1:35 Hours & Workweek
• 2:26 What happens when it's a slow week?
• 4:29 Why networking is important
• 5:02 Countering the inconsistency
• 6:05 Wrapping Up

Transcript

Catherine 00:08
Hello there. My name is Catherine and I am 23 years old, working as a full time freelancer in the media and entertainment industry. And welcome to the Highway Diaries podcast. This podcast is a diary of how I'm currently going about my life and career, and I thought it would be cool to post these. I have them as a resource for any other people wanting to get into freelance or the media and entertainment industry or as a behind the scenes sort of look into this alternate way of living and working And this episode, we are talking about my work schedule.


Catherine 00:38
Since I have multiple responsibilities and streams of income, it's pretty important that I keep this part of my lifestyle organized. So as an overview to the types of work I maintain, I have to quote unquote part time jobs, if you will, that are guaranteed just about every month. One of them is my job as a piano instructor, which I a lot one specific day a week for, and then they know they can also use me as like a sub or fill in.


Catherine 1:07
And it took me about a month to get a student base at the studio. I work out where my one day that I have is a full eight hour day of teaching. The second one is my work I do for a post-production facility as a QC technician, transcriber and assistant to the Post producer So for this, I don't have a set schedule, but I usually average about ten to 30 hours over the course of a standard Monday through Friday work week, depending how busy it is for each of those sub departments.


Catherine 01:35
So just with those two jobs, I have a minimum of 18 hours allocated and a maximum of 38 hours over the course of six days in a week. Now some of you might be alarmed at how inconsistent the scenes or trouble that I worked six days a week, which is totally a personal preference for me. I like how different each of my weeks are, and the overall flexibility I have on my workdays are also a lot shorter than the average 40 hour, five day workweek.


Catherine 02:01
So the tradeoff is adding an extra day, which I personally don't mind. And this is kind of similar to a lot of other freelancers that at least the ones that post about their schedules and stuff and you may be asking how this inconsistency works with my bills and financial responsibilities and I touch on that in a whole other episode called How I Budget as a 1099 W-2 Worker.


Catherine 02:24
I'll link that in the show notes. The next part of my work schedule is basically preparing for those slow weeks and which I always try to have a standard production gig allotted for one week out of the month or seven production days total over the course of a month. This is where I use job boards or I have some other not as frequent gigs that happen every month.


Catherine 02:45
And for the those specific gigs, it's about four that are most of the time reoccurring. But, you know, I don't always bet on it. One is a small live stream production I pay for. If you listen to my other podcasts in my first one, this is I got this job through the first corporate production company I was working out out of college when I was also working at Guitar Center.


Catherine 03:08
This is the same guy. So I work with him once a month. The second is my position at a company called Good Planet Innovation, where I am a sustainability coordinator, which is good plan. Innovation is a waste diversion service for production companies because if you are in production, you know how wasteful sets and everything can be. So that company we go there and we recycle, we compost, we donate, we do all that.


Catherine 03:35
It's that's what the services for each production essentially. The third is another gig I assist another mentor of mine and four isn't really production related, but more of something that I do for just a passion. And why not but I love animals and my usual clients for dog sitting, which is I think I have about four families which keep me busy throughout the month and I got these clients from Wag.


Catherine 04:02
I don't know if I should disclose that, but I still have swag and I still use them. And so yeah. Is this still freaking you out about how inconsistent managing this lifestyle can be? Well, the way to get around this fear is to just, you know, be organized and be proactive. Truly, that is the most important thing. So this means you have to be adamant about job searching, which I have a whole other episode on, on how I job search as a freelancer, and I'll link that in the show notes.


Catherine 04:29
But yeah, I do really want to highlight the importance of networking and maintaining long term relationships with people. About 90% of my gigs were offered to me through asking professors after I graduated to network, reading with people, maintaining relationships with past places I interned at, and then word of mouth through colleagues for instance, the work that I do with my one mentor, which is kind of below average production rates, has already paid off because it has networked me with another person and they've been giving me jobs.


Catherine 05:02
But yeah, eventually I want to counter this inconsistency with some other passive income like this podcast and establishing myself in the podcast world. So I can offer my services to other podcasters, you know, etc. I currently have this podcast that I write, produce and edit, and then I have another podcast with my two sisters that I also write, edit, co-produce and co-host.


Catherine 05:25
Yeah, it's really all about the time and effort you willing to put in and your current priorities. I am one of those workaholic people and you can ask any of my friends or family and they'd be sure to vouch for all the crazy ideas I've had and my running list of career ambitions and I will always keep mentioning Alex Fasulo and her podcast and just overall community called the Freelance Fairytales is really, really great inspiration and does a great she does a great job outlining what you can do while you were at a nine to five hair for a freelance lifestyle and a whole bunch of other sorts of things.


Catherine 05:57
You can hear about my experience and how I quit my full time jobs in my episode. On how I became a freelancer a 23 again LinkedIn show notes. But yeah, so that is it for this episode and free. Feel free to take a listen to all my other episodes and topics. And if this reaches you and you have any other burning questions or stories or just want to reach out and talk, I'd be happy to use this as an outlet to conversate with everyone and learn from everybody.


Catherine 06:23
Thanks for listening. See you next time.