If you work from home, chances are that at some time or another you have been tempted to take on more work than you can comfortably handle. For some reason, most of us think that more work is better. From a strictly economic perspective, that is correct. More work equals more pay – and who doesn’t want more pay.
If you look beyond the dollar signs, though, many factors play into how much work you can comfortably have on your plate at any given time. One very important consideration is what you already have going on in your life as a whole. While the project or job that you are thinking of picking up may seem small and uncomplicated on its own, it has to be able to fit in with everything that you already do in such a way that it does not upset the balance that you have worked so hard to create in your life.
What got me to thinking about this is that I have been invited to bid on a freelance writing project that seems like it could be rather large and time consuming. It also has the potential to be quite profitable. My dilemma is that a few weeks ago, I was struggling to regain a sense of balance and order in my life, and I finally feel like over the past week or so I have been able to make that happen.
The other part of the dilemma is that opportunities for work have been presenting themselves to me left and right. If I do not bid on this writing project, there are other great ones out there that I could bid on. I recently picked up one definite and one almost definite client in another area of my work. The list goes on, and I am grateful for that. However, I am the type of person that agonizes over the simplest of decisions such as what to have for lunch, so making decisions about work matters can be a bit of an ordeal.
This time, though, the right choice seems very clear to me. At a different time and place in my life, I would have placed the bid on that writing project days ago. Right now, I am so happy to be living a balanced life that I will politely decline the invitation to bid with the confidence that I am doing the right thing for myself and for my family. After all, I was not the only person that was invited to bid on that project. Perhaps for one of the other invitees, that project is just the right thing at just the right time.
Is your work load in balance with the rest of your life, or do you keep piling it on?