Focusing on family - striking a balance

I have been focusing on improving my life with a huge emphasis on personal development. I was focusing on improving my productivity, with the intention of improving my output at work. I was learning the art of managing teams and clients. All that is good, but I think I have missed out on the target.

When you really think about it, you do all of that, because you want to give the best for your family. So we work harder and longer, in order to provide for them. But is it what they expect from us?

In this process I have deprived my wife and my kid, what they treasure the most. My time with them. In the quest to do better professionally and financially, I have significantly reduced the time that I spend with them. Is this really what I want? Do I want to achieve all that I want to achieve and stand there at the top all by myself? No WAY!

So I made some changes in my life. After discussions with my wife, I set aside set working hours for my ISC work and for time with the family. And whether I meet my financial targets for a month or not, I am not going to allow my ISC working time eat into my family time! I had practiced this for about 1 and 1/2 weeks before I had to travel out of the country for an assignment. But it worked out pretty well. Somehow I started to feel fuller and more complete. A different satisfaction was creeping into my mind.

Now that i am away from home for a week, I am spending almost all my free time doing some ISC work, as my family is not with me on this trip. So this week I am hoping to get most of my ISC work done, so when I get back home, I can spend a little bit more time with my family playing catch-up!

I think it is essential for any freelancer to concentrate on striking some balance between their family and their work. It is perfectly all right to spend your days and your nights when you are single and not in a relationship. But if you are married and have a family, it is essential that you put aside dedicated time for them, so they are not left out on your quest for success!

My next target is to master some time management technique to help me improve my productivity. Right now I am a bit torn between GTD and First Things First by Covey, as they come from two different perspectives. More on that later!

Too much to do...

I got too much of work on my hands. I have three projects going on in parallel right now. I guess this is a freelancers dream, having more work than you can handle. The trick is to keep it at a pleasant dream, without allowing it to become a nightmare!

So far I have managed to satisfy two of my clients. So I can buy a little time from them. They will allow me to delay their work a bit. But I have one client who I am about to drive off the cliff! Now he has been waiting for me for a week and I don't think I can keep him hanging any longer. So I am doing my best to give him some deliverable to keep him with me...

The process is draining me. I have to manage my freelance work in parallel to my day job. There's a lot going on in my day job as well. That leaves me a very little time to attend to my freelance clients. The stuff at work is also mentally draining me by the end of the work day so it is really tiring to attend to my freelance work during the evening.

Under the current situation, I cannot give up my day job as well as I need the security it offers. i am planning to go for a mortgage and for that I need the security of a permanent job. The bank wont even consider lending me money if I was a full time freelancer. And I am preparing for a hefty monthly payment on the mortgage and hence I need the freelance for the additional income it brings in.

So I got it all going right for me now. I got the security of a permanent job and the additional income from freelance gigs. So I get to take the mortgage and at the same time maybe not get buried by the monthly installment thanks to my freelance income. Only if there were more hours in a day so I can do all of this!

August and September ISC report

As far as my ISC activities are concerned, the last two months have been pretty bad. Actually the last month has been the worst since I started working on oDesk regularly. The reason being I was away on an assignment for my day job and that had a very significant impact on my ISC activities.

Actually I left the country towards the latter part of the month of August. Therefore I had to miss out on the last 10 days of the month. Due to this my August ISC income was around $570. This was about $500 less than my target.

I returned back to the country in the middle of September. By then I had already missed out on half the month. And as soon as I returned I had mad rush at my day job as I had to catch up on a lot of things there as well. And I had been away from my family for over 3 weeks. Therefore I gave prominence to spending time with them after I returned. So it was work and then time with family after work, which left me with very little time to work on freelancing projects. As a result, I have managed to only earn $ 410 for the month of September.

My income suffered due to my lack of time to put into the projects. But the last two months had been pretty good in terms of building customer relationships.

One of my long standing oDesk clients decided to leave oDesk due to some of the issues he had with oDesk. But he still wanted to continue working for him directly. I worked out a method to send him time sheets and invoices so he can pay me for my work. He gave me two pretty good projects to work on which should keep me occupied for some time.

Another oDesk project which I am doing is progressing pretty well. My client is extremely happy with my contribution to the project. Hopefully I should be able to complete that project within this month. That would dry up one of my continuous work streams but I will be seeing the end of a product and it will start selling in the US market. I can add another reference to my cap!

The best news in terms of clients during the last month had been striking of a relationship with another US based client through oDesk. Although I lost the initial project that I bid on for this client, due to a delay in my part in responding to one of his emails (I was overseas and didn't have access to email for one whole day!), he liked me so much that he gave me a few small odd jobs to try me out. I think I came through pretty well on that and now I just got the third job from him! I can see this working relationship blossoming into a very profitable relationship for me as well as for him.

My hope for the month of October is to get back to my targeted earning level of $ 1000. There is a spanner in the works for that too. I am required again to travel overseas for an assignment on my day job. But luckily that will only be for about 10 days. And that schedule does not seem that hectic. So hopefully I will be able to continue my freelancing work even while I am away.