As freelancers and content creators, we know how to work hard. That’s not a surprise — when we’re responsible for our financial security, we know that it all comes down to the projects we bill and the work we deliver.
But, there’s a danger here: overworking and burnout. If we want to protect our peace of mind and increase our resilience, then we must be careful about how much time we spend on mentally draining, deep, creative work.
The fact is that great content creation is hard. It takes a toll on our energy and focus. Studies show that most freelancers, content creators, and knowledge workers can only manage around three to five hours of concentrated, deep, work a day.
Here’s how to build a realistic amount of deep-work hours into your daily routine.
How to plan around limited hours of deep work
Deep work is harder than you might think:
Most freelancers and knowledge workers can only manage around three to five hours of concentrated, deep work per day.
Many of the creative freelance activities we perform for clients are deep, knowledge work: Researching, creating deliverables, reviewing, and similar tasks.
Because we can only focus for a few hours a day, this limits the time we can spend working on client deliverables.
You might take this into account when planning client work, negotiating deadlines, scheduling, and making other commitments with your time.
Doing more than five hours of deep work a day can lead to burnout, meaning you could become overly stressed, deliver poor-quality work, and compromise your health.
You can also take this into account when setting your freelance rates and charging for your time.
Of course, you will probably work more than five hours a day, and you can use your non-deep-work time on areas like client communications, admin, invoicing, and similar activities.
Benefits of planning around shorter deep-work hours
Give yourself some breathing room:
You can negotiate deadlines based on the creative time that you can fully dedicate to client work.
Basing your deliverables on shorter hours means you can be more certain of your commitments and plan a realistic schedule for completing work.
Freelance businesses need administration — you can carry out client management, invoicing, bookkeeping, marketing, communications, and other, less-intense tasks during the hours you’re not doing deep work.
Understanding your energy and focus levels helps you to avoid burnout from working too long or too hard.
You can also base your freelance rates on these shorter hours and increase your pricing based on how much you expect to work.
How to provide realistic freelance timescales based on shorter deep-work hours
Some suggestions on how to understand and optimize your deep-work time:
Track how many hours a day you’re actually spending on deep work for clients. Apps like Toggl and RescueTime can help you to measure where you’re spending time.
Continue tracking your time for a few weeks and get an average number of hours per day that you’re spending on client work.
You might want to adjust these hours based on other time you spend on client deliverables, like communications or meetings.
Apply the actual amount of time you’re able to spend each day when you’re scheduling deadlines and planning around other client milestones.
Communicate your deadlines, milestones, and commitments to your clients and get their agreement.
If you have common tasks and deliverables that you carry out, you can track your time on related tasks, then come up with an average to complete similar pieces of work.
Periodically track and check how much time you’re spending on client work each day and adjust your time estimates accordingly.
Frequently asked questions about setting freelance rates based on fewer chargeable hours
Why can’t I base my freelance time on working seven hours a day?
You might be able to, especially if you’re actually spending all of those hours working on a client deliverable. But, the reality is that many freelancers are not consistently working for clients over all of that time. This means it will take you more days to complete work because you’ll be doing deep work for fewer hours on an average day.
Is three to five hours really the limit to client work per day?
Most studies suggest that the average person can only do three to five hours of deep work a day. Of course, it’s possible that freelancers with a superheroic focus may be able to constantly work for more hours. You might also be able to focus for more than five hours a day over the short term, but doing that for too long can lead to burnout. It’s why I recommend tracking exactly how much time you’re spending on client work so that you know what’s doable for you.
Here’s some research:
Can I commit more of my daily time to client work?
That really depends on the nature of your freelance work and what you’ve agreed to and documented with your client. Many freelancers include client meetings in their time commitments, even though that may not be deep work. Base your time commitments on your working practices the scope of your projects, and your agreements with your clients.
How do I apply these reduced hours if I deliver work on a fixed or project basis?
It’s a good idea to understand how long it takes you to complete specific tasks or deliver particular pieces of work. You can always use software like RescueTime or Toggl to track how long tasks take you. Once you know the average length of time, you can figure out how many hours or days it will take you to complete that work.
That’s how I set my expected project times for specific deliverables based on the word count for the content that I write. I know roughly how long it takes me to gather requirements, research a topic, write the content, and incorporate revisions. I use that understanding to set realistic deadlines with clients, based on their requirements, my other commitments, and my schedule. While specific pieces might take me slightly longer or shorter on an individual basis, everything will average out in the end.