Take that break.

By Lee Maggs (www.leemaggs.com)

When asked by friends, 'What is the best thing about doing websites Lee?', one of my favorite answers would of been that I could work 24/7 from anywhere in the world as long as I had an internet connecton.

It does sound great does it not?

I always found myself at my PC, working at 8pm at night, sometimes right through to the early hours of the morning. But already I had done a good 9 hours of work earlier,  just managing to squeeze in a couple of food breaks, and a bit of lunch with my wife.

I always say to my friends, that my job is so flexible, but is it really?

If I was to monitor the amount of hours worked over a week, an average week would probably consist of around 90 hours of work, which although I am my own boss, my life suffers socially. I have said to friends and family on many occasions 'sorry I would love to come, but I have to finish some work for a client'. I am sure many of you as designers or who use the web as a business have done the same.

Time management

Recently, after listening to a webcast by a few graduate web designers, although I am sure they were much younger than me, they had mixed opinions about working/ social activitys. In fairness to them they did go out over the weekends but were so drunk they could not be anywhere near their PC's or Macs over the period ( It was probably for the best!)... This brought it home to me, why should I feel the need to work over a weekend whilst the rest of the world is off..

There is a quality of life I desire for my wife and I, thats why I work and work hard. But I do seem to be missing the 'quality' bit as all my time has been used up working.

With web design it really is easy to get lost in your workload and loose sight of time.

I have now changed my time management to 'time management'!

this is what I aim for on a weekly basis, some weeks I do hit this, and some I just cant... But it does give me a rule set to try and abide, as before, I never really had a directive.

• work consisting of 30-40 hours per week for clients.

• allow 10 hours for research, current trends and other projects.

• Spend the remainder of time with Wife, the dog, my family and friends!

Its no coincidence, the more time I was exposed to having time out from my work, my productivity whist I did work was definately an improvement overall, obvious other benifits included, were simple things like not feeling tired or groggy, eating a more balanced diet. I even go to the gym 3 times a week now!

Have a look at your own time management and see if you fall into the same as I once did.