From Employee to Self-Employed: The 3 Steps I Used to Create My Own Schedule
I quit my day job and said goodbye to the safety of being handed a pre-made weekly work schedule.
The assigned shifts of my previous job were decided by managers each week and were factors inadvertently determining my sleeping hours, free time, and when I could spend my energy on personal projects.
My life happened around that schedule for years, and I was consistently at the mercy of whatever manager made it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful to have had recurring hours where I knew I’d be making money. It gave me a ballpark estimate of my income, which made things like saving, budgeting, and investing much easier.
A job is a job, and I respect that.
However, I came to a point this year where I was continually squeezing in hours around those shifts to work on the things that were actually meaningful to me. But because my investment was so sporadic, they never could gain real traction.
I denied it for a while, but the more I tried to “find the time,” the more I realized I was never going to see my goals to fruition with the limitations this schedule put on me.
So I quit—not without some hemming and hawing, but I quit.
Now, without the constraint of this job, I find myself at the steering wheel of my days. I get to determine where I go from here.
Here’s my “learning out loud” process as I fumble my way into this new lifestyle and designed my time
1. I asked myself some questions
I’m a big fan of beginning any new process with a big, old list of questions. As humans, we’re so prone to anxiously want to get to the answers that I believe it makes for lower-quality conclusions. With the clarifying power of questions, I got clear about what I was reaching for in this career shift.
What’s my why?
This is a well-worn page from my crush, Simon Sinek’s literal book, Start with Why. On my deathbed, what do I hope to point back to and feel fulfilled that I got to do with my life? I took time to describe the impact I want to make.
If I could spend my time doing one thing, what would it be?
I tried to remember a time I was working (for money or recreation), and it was so enjoyable I felt like I was cheating. What’s that thing I’m constantly vying for more and more time to work on?
I wake up a year from now. Describe the ideal, typical day.
My answer had to include work of some kind, but other than that, what does a great workday a year from now look like? When do I wake up? What do I do? How long do I work for? Am I working with other people or alone?
2. I brainstormed my heart out
Knowing how your brain best likes “to storm” is vital in determining your goals. Do you go for a drive and record your thoughts on your phone? Do you pace around the room and internally process? Do you need a pen and paper to aid in turning the valve of your stream of consciousness?
I chose a few different methods:
A DIGITAL JUNK DRAWER
I’m keeping an ongoing digital note of research to gather my goals as they take shape. It’s like a mental junk drawer.
I put items that might be relevant in the future but don’t have a place or action attached quite yet. If I come across an opportunity, something sparks an idea, or I rediscover a helpful thought from way back when I let this digital note be the catch-all.
A VISUAL CALENDAR
I busted out my wall calendar because I know if I don’t see something physical, it’s much harder to keep it in front of mind. I looked at the month of October only. I’m starting small because things get murky if I look too far ahead. So I’m taking it month-by-month. I penned all the social and professional commitments I have coming up to get an accurate gauge of my remaining time.
A BRAIN DUMP SESSION
I took to a pen and paper with this one to expend my thoughts in whatever form they wanted to come—lists, bubble maps, diagrams, and stream of consciousness. I took the pressure off to make it all make sense and allowed those ideas to live somewhere other than my head. It’s like dumping all the pieces of a puzzle on the ground to get them out of the box they came in. This way, you can begin flipping the tiles right-side-up to make sense of it. This way, you can see what you’re working with.
DOCUMENTING VERBAL PROCESSING
Finally, I recorded a voice note on my phone and expressed my current standing with things—practically and emotionally. I find that verbally processing a subject accesses a different part of my brain, yielding results I don’t get by writing or contemplation. I took a moment to verbally wade through the details.
In this brainstorming, my goals began to emerge. Additionally, I discovered the boundaries I’d need to put in place to set myself up to succeed. I’ve worked enough with myself enough to know what holds me back, so I created a proactive plan to avoid these sneaky traps.
Here’s what my boundaries in work look like:
I must stop working at the stop time. It doesn’t matter if I got a lot done or struggled all day and got nothing done. I have to stop working at the stop time which for me right now is 5 PM. I know myself, and I can be consumed to the point I work through all three meals and into the night. I knew I needed a bumper here to protect me from myself.
I must start at the start time. No “Oh, let me scroll on my phone for ten minutes first” or “I should probably do the dishes before I get started.” I can’t use meaningless tasks to procrastinate jumping into the fray. Getting started is half the climb for me, so I must mentally clock in at the predetermined start time. It’s for my own good.
No social media until the stop time. Social media apps are designed to keep me scrolling, and boy do they work their magic on me. I will go fishing for silly videos until the end of time, convincing myself repeatedly that “This is the last video I’m watching, I swear.” I knew I couldn’t start my day with social media nor use it as my “quick little break” in between tasks. I’m not throwing out the baby with the bath water and deleting them all, but social media will be something I enjoy after stopping time. My livelihood depends on me staying focused.
I must involve movement every day. Movement looks like a walk, a yoga practice, a trip to the mailbox, a hike, an errand run, or anything that gets me moving. I’m going from a bustling service job on my feet for eight hours a day to sitting at a computer. I need to get the blood pumping somehow in the middle of the day. It doesn’t have to look a certain way, but it has to happen somehow.
3. I created my time structure
After asking myself a few poignant questions and brainstorming to determine my direction, I knew I needed a game plan for my day-to-day work life to bring it together. Previously, when I happened to have time to invest in these projects, I would work on them—which was haphazardly between shift times when I could muster the energy.
But now, I had a blank page before me, and I got to draw the lines.
To help, I took the advice of productivity coach Renee Clair and divided my days into time blocks. Time blocks are sets of hours dedicated to working on specific, pre-determined tasks. Clair recommends you take a moment before your work week begins to outline where these blocks will fall in the landscape of your coming week. This is a way you can run your schedule instead of letting it run you. Clair encourages you to not only address professional tasks when you sit down to time block but first and foremost, schedule blocks of time for your fun, life-giving activities.
So far, I’ve approached this as simplistically as possible to get a gauge of what my workload will require and what I’ll need in the midst of it. I’m going into it understanding this will take some experimenting and troubleshooting, and I’ll likely need to adjust as time goes on.
Clair also understands this and suggests a weekly review of your routine to determine what’s working and what needs tweaking.
My time blocks at the moment look like this:
6 AM - 8 AM: OPEN MORNING TIME
Morning walk, coffee, breakfast, newspaper, etc.
8 AM - 12 PM: WRITING PROJECTS
Editorial work, pitching, personal blogs, website management, social shipping, research, etc.
12 PM - 1 PM: LUNCH + MOVEMENT
Eat, walk, yoga practice, nap, take a drive, no screens!
1 PM - 5 PM: EVENT WORK
Current project management, operation project management, emails, pitching, support, etc.
5 PM: STOP TIME
Make dinner and open time for the rest of the day.
In all, I’m grateful to have the opportunity to direct my own days for this chapter of life. And while the amount of things I want to accomplish felt like a mountain at the start, I found my way to a trailhead to scale it through means of questions, brainstorming, and taking ownership over my day-to-day.
Being in control of my time was something I’ve wanted for a while, and I’m thankful I finally got to this point where it’s the reality I get to wake up to, and we’ll see where it takes me.
What methods do you use to design your time? What are your tips and tricks for keeping yourself on track?