When you work for a company or any employer they are in charge of the direction of the company and the targets, you’re paid to work for X amount of hours, and, if you’re lucky you may get a few bonuses along the way. When you work for yourself whether it be freelancing, making money online, passive income or whatever is it important to establish what’s enough?
I think so.
If you don’t have an end game you could work for 24 hours a day and not feel that you’ve achieved enough. Everyone seems to make targets whether it’s monthly earnings targets, subscriber targets, sales or email list targets. I’m thinking that perhaps equally important is to set limits. To cap our goals, to feel satisfied at what we have and not yearn for more more more, not immediately anyway. Some may scoff and argue that this will stifle ambition and hinder success but I think it may have the opposite effect.
For example, lets say I don’t set myself a target for earnings this year, a year when I’d like to earn money freelance from home doing this and that. One of two things may happen, I’ll either be lazy and complacent and not earn a penny (or not enough for my requirements), or I may work myself into the ground and earn plenty but exhaust myself and sicken myself of the lifestyle.
Okay, so I think I’ve established that targets are important, hey, if they weren’t then no company would have them. So I set my target for this year at £500, and to be honest depending on how things go this could be a relatively low target (or it could be quite a difficult target), but I was starting from a standing position whereby I had the idea but very little real plan of how it would come together. I’m glad to say I’ve taken a couple strides forward, and I’ll talk about that in a later post, but £500 in December last year seemed like a realistic target. Now, given my progress I could get greedy or just ambitious and move the goalpost to £1000 per month, but I’m not going to.
I’m going to limit myself to earning £500 per month for 2009. In 2010 a new target will be set, but for 2009 it’s £500.
Why?
At this point in time I don’t need more than that. I’m not looking to be a millionaire (not immediately anyway!), as nice as that would be, initially the real aim is the lifestyle, the money is just a means to release more time to work on other interesting projects and ideas.
I want to feel a sense of achievement when I reach my target and maintain that £500 per month. Making £500 for yourself from nothing is a big challenge (for me). I don’t want to de-value it by feeling that I could have made more if only I’d worked harder (there’ll be other years and bigger targets).
I want to feel that I can ease back a little once I’ve reached this point – I’ll be working really hard to get there. Money isn’t the only thing that I want to achieve from creating multiple income streams working from home (or my favourite office space – McDonalds), I also want to do it because of the flexibility. I can’t be flexible if I set my targets too high or try to exceed my targets too much.
I want to spend less time working for money, if my targets are all money related then I’ll be under pressure to work more and more hours, a bit like the 9-5, we all know it’s not really ’9-5′ more like 7.30 – 6.30 with a few weekends thrown in, once you’ve commuted and done your overtime ‘bit’. If I wanted to work 40 hours a week then I could easily get a job, that’s not the point of this exercise.
Then there’s perhaps the biggest reason of all for wanting to pursue this lifestyle, being able to be here for Erin, at the moment that’s a pretty hefty commitment, full-time care (hence the 14 hour limit, see below) When she’s at school it’ll be being able to do the ‘school run’, a nice walk for us, taking her to her hobbies and being able to spend as much time with her as we both want (!)
For these reasons it seems prudent to set another target, or mabe it’s a limit. Spend the equivalent of approximately two hours a day on Project 500, that’s 14 hours a week. That target is also for 2009 only.
How?
If I reach my target of £500 will I stop working (given that I’m not paid by the hour this money will be relatively automatic, other than a couple hours of upkeep)? Certainly not, my two hour target remains, it just means my focus will be allowed to shift from the direct pursuit of money to other projects. For example I may choose to do some learning which may eventually help me earn more money but I’ll be under no pressure for an immediate return on investment (like I am now). Not having the limitations that the pursuit of money brings allows your creative self to run wild, I’ve proved that over the three years I have been ‘off’ with Erin and under no pressure to earn. I’ve read, blogged and learned which has ultimately opened doors that were firmly closed before.
Finally, feeling that you don’t have to ‘work’ actually increases your desire to work, another lesson learned while I was on the outside of the working world looking in. Allowing yourself to focus on ‘the work’ (and I put that in inverted commas because I don’t really consider what I’m embarking on as work, more an extension of a hobby really) rather than the money you need to earn it improves your morale, your self-esteem and your desire to work.
So to re-cap, for 2009, my targets and limitations are £500 per month and two hours per day. I expect that if certain projects go well then this target/limit may be exceeded and if that happens then I’ll probably put the excess elsewhere, so I don’t get used to it too much 
That actually only works out at about £8.30 an hour, but if you were in your first year of an employed job, that would be a salary of £15k, roughly what my salary would be if I went back to my old career.
Of course 2010 will be a different story, I will (hopefully) have the basis of something and will be looking to push myself quite hard, I’ll still set targets and limits though. This year’s a learning year, and my earnings targets reflect that.
Do you have targets for 2009?
Do you set yourself limits too?
Is there a point where you think ‘enough is enough’?
If you don’t set limits how do you acheive balance?
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I've been blogging for four years and write about anything and everything that takes my fancy.
Above is me with my beloved Ernie in Port Aventura and left with our love child in Florida.
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