My desk

I’ve been working almost 5 months as a freelancer, and although it gives me much greater freedom than I had when I was in my day job, I still have to put in a normal 8-hour (or so) work day. What I find hard is actually separating between work and private life, although I’m not sure if it is actually a problem, but it is still not easy to distinguish between “working” and “surfing for leisure”. It gets dark and cold in the winter in Norway, and personally I’d rather sit in front of my PC and do something productive than watch TV.

So here is what a typical day looks like for me in case you ever wondered what us freelancers do:

6.00 – Get woken up by girlfriend. Try to fall asleep again.

7.30 – Stumble out of bed, and get the coffee machine fired up.

8-9.30 – Check my email and answer or attend to any new e-mail. Log into WooThemes admin and check the e-mail to see if there are any problems, then answer all the new forum posts. Check how our sales are going (this is addictive so I usually do this 5-20 times a day).

9.30-10.00 – Check my stock to see how low it has dropped since I bought it. Check my Google Reader for the latest news around the interweb. This would be seen as slacking in  my old job… now it is necessary

10-11.00 – Usually have my daily skype chat with Adii and sometimes Mark if he manages to get out of bed. These chats are vital to running WooThemes and also really helpful at motivating me to get things done.

11-16.00 – Do some bug / feature coding on our themes. Working on implementing threaded comments at the moment. Otherwise I spend most my time on theme development or general admin work on WooThemes.

16-17.00 – Usually get bored of working if there isn’t a specific design I’m working on. Jam a bit on my guitar until my gf comes home and I need turn it down.

17-20.00 – Random checks on WooThemes e-mail/forum and Google Reader. Remember it’s dark outside so only thing I can do is go to the gym or go for a walk

20-24.00 – Dedicated to laying on the couch watching TV and winding down from thinking on business stuff. I’ve noticed it is harder to get to sleep if I stay up late and design/program because I can’t stop thinking about it when I go to bed.

So is my typical day anything like yours?