In planning a portfolio career, we can think about using your skills in different ways, but beyond skills we can also think about how you are juggling the allocation of your time.
There are many different ways we can conceive of allocating time towards certain projects or activities. Here’s some ways to think of dividing your time:
- Days – you might split your days doing childcare in the mornings and then in the afternoon you work on freelance animation projects. Or maybe you’re a personal trainer who sees clients before and after their work days (5am to 9am and 4pm to 7pm) and in between you nap and work on designing your line of eco-friendly sports gear.
- Weeks – you could give 3 days per week to one kind of work and 2 days per week to another kind of work. You could work Monday to Friday at an office job and Saturdays you sell your work at a craft fair (work that you create in your evenings and other time off). You could alternate weeks, doing one week of online jewelry tutoring and the next week working in a smoothie bar. Or 3 weeks of every month to one activity and 1 week per month to developing your freelance business.
- Months – you might be a teacher who works from mid-August until mid-June teaching drama and then during the summer you run a few weeks of puppet workshops. You might do different things according to the seasons – be a figure skating coach in the winter, lead Pilates retreats in the Spring and Fall and take the summer off to work on writing your book.
- Years – You could even work in 1-year chunks. This year I am going to x and next year I am going to do y. Or maybe you can take a year-long sabbatical from your work and have that solid chunk of time to focus on your creative freelance business before going back to work and running it as a side-hustle.
There are two points I want to make about this division of time: first, there are no rules and second, you get to decide!
This is part of the creativity of being a thriving creative. You are not bound by other people’s rules and expectations. You decide how you are going to earn your money and spend your time.
But the point is to not just go along with the accepted norms (Monday to Friday, 9-5) but to be intentional about how you use your time.
If the nighttime economy of New York City is worth $35 Billion and the UK nighttime economy is worth £66 million, this points to opportunities to earn money while others sleep which stretches to considering how you might work when others are playing and play while others work. This is one of the perks of being a freelance creative, you can be intentional about what works best for you.
Let me acknowledge the many limitations and boundaries that people face.
I am not for one moment suggesting that every person has all of these choices available to them. Life is complicated.
You may have children or parents you care for. You may have a chronic illness or a disability that restricts the time you can give to things. You may have debts or need to earn a lot of money to look after your family. None of this is easy and I completely understand constraints.
It’s a privilege to be able to be this flexible. But I also think that this is where creativity has to enter.
Yes, there are many barriers. But what does water do when it encounters a barrier? It usually finds a way around, over or through the barrier. Your job is to think like water and figure out how you can navigate your way around obstacles.
We all have 24 hours in the day, 7 days in the week and 365 days in a year. The creativity is in figuring out what to do with them.
Where you can, within the current limitations of your life, how can you make that time work for you to support your goals and dreams and realize your creativity?
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