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A Simple Recurring Timer Will Help You End Your Day On Time
As a freelancer, we can start and end work whenever we choose. While this freedom can be great, it’s also problematic for actually getting stuff done. It turns out, being successful as a freelancer means mimicking many of the behaviors of traditional employment! Ending work at a designated time is one of those elements.
For me, drawing and enforcing time boundaries around my work is important, especially since I’ve gone down the road of working every day and all the time.
Most of us have found ourselves realizing its late into the evening and we're still working away while our spouse and kids are waiting to spend time together. So, I have a designated start (8:30 am) and end times (6:00 pm) to my weekday (I don’t work weekends) to set and enforce boundaries around when I start and end my workday.
Two ways I stay accountable to following through on the conclusion of my workday includes the use of my habit management tool (Habitica) and a daily iPhone alarm.
While Habitica gives me points if I end work on time (or penalizes me if I don’t) the alarm going off 30 minutes prior to 6:00 pm provides a reminder with enough time to mentally and physically ramp down my day.
Looking back at my Habitica history, it appears I'm 60% successful in ending my day on time (compared to 95% success rate in starting my workday after 8:30 am). With room for improvement on enforcing my end of day work time, this method is clearly not failproof, but it does move us in the right direction.
What about you? What’s something you do to help you end your workday?
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