Freelancing: How Do You Keep Your Workload Manageable?

I don't have a typewriter, but I always thought it would be cool to write short copy, like headlines, on one.

This is my tenth year freelancing (after five years in a San Francisco ad agency; I do advertising copywriting/creative direction), and my problem has always been (and it's a problem I'm grateful for, believe me): How do I make it so I'm not working too much? This is especially relevant now that I'm pregnant/hopefully soon to have a child, as I can't imagine 16 hour days, like the one I worked yesterday, are good for the baby/ies.

This week is the first bad workweek I've had in a while. My husband, who doesn't want to be married to a workaholic, has helped me set it up so I don't work too much, encouraging me not to take on new clients, helping me limit travel when necessary (although I can ramp it up, too, when needed...I spent six weeks in Boston last year helping out at the most fabulous ad agency ever...that work paid for all our IVF procedures).

My main strategy is to have a list of projects I'm committed to, and to keep that list under a certain length. The company I do the most work for just asked me to format my list differently, though (they're trying to standardize lists across writers), so what was before a two-page list (I seemed to do OK if I was keeping that list two pages or less) is now a fifteen-page list, and I'm feeling a little unsure of how much work I have at the moment. Need to come up with a new maximum length.

It's really important for me not to work too much, as I like my job when it's manageable days, but tend to get miserable when I'm working too many hours (because then I can't write, or post here, or go for a walk and oh, the weather was glorious yesterday, so sad that I didn't get out into it).

My biggest client, they're having a conference call with their writers this morning, to talk about workload management. A lot of the people on that call have been in this business a lot longer than me...maybe they'll have something to teach me.

I'm doing better than I was (16 hour days used to be the norm, now they are the exception), but there's still room for improvement.

Photo credit: Thuy Pham.