A few weeks ago I accepted a side job to finance my monthly expenses and to finance my business. The good thing about this side job is that I only have to work 18 hours a week. To put it differently: I work around 6 hours for 3 days a week.
After I started freelancing for this job I had a bad feeling every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. These are the three days I am working each week. I started to think: “Augh, again Thursday. I have so many important things to do but now I have to go to this job.” While I only worked for a quarter of the whole day it felt as if the tiny job is taking away my whole week. During the three days I was working I achieved nearly nothing.
Attitude Change
A few days ago I started to realize that I only work for 6 hours each day. Six hours of freelance work only equal one-quarter of a 24-hour day or a third of my waking hours. I realized that the reason why I felt so unproductive was not the reason I had to work but my mental attitude. I already had a prejudice: If I work in this job I won’t get done anything else. This was what I thought and it became my reality. The recent weeks I literally achieved nothing remarkable on the days I had to work.
Time Management
In the beginning of this week, I started my personal daily planner. From now on I will write down every morning what I want to achieve when I want to accomplish what, and how much time I have. When I sketched a timeline of the day (from 5 AM until 11 PM) I realized how many hours I left ‘unused’.
Depending on when I wake up I have around 7 hours every morning which I can use to work on my company. Depending on when I go to bed I have more than 2 or 3 hours each evening for focused work. That’s in total around 8-9 hours I have available for my own work on days I have to freelance.
By starting to manage my time with a daily planner I realized that the real reason why I felt unproductive was my inefficient time management and especially my own attitude.
What is Your Reason
I think it does not really matter if you work full-time or part-time. The real reason why you feel exhausted or unproductive is most likely yourself (except you work in a hard labor job). Have a look onto your attitudes towards your job, your time, your boss, and your coworkers. Don’t let negative people in your job ruin your day. If your working environment is too bad think about looking for a different job. Start using time management tools and you will be surprised that after a 8 hour work day there are still 6-8 hours left for your personal projects. Your day is more than your work. Change your attitude and you will achieve more and be happier.
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