The Self Care Life with Sara Miller

Going from Freelancer to Full Time

Sara Miller

I made the transition from freelancer to full time employee almost a year ago. Here are a few pieces of advice I've picked up along the way.

Here's where you can find me:

Blog - https://sarastrives.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sarastrives/

Intro and Outro Music:

Summer Vibes by Simon More https://soundcloud.com/user-73416670

Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_summer-vibes

Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/FTUkaPnYdLU

0
00:00:09.100 --> 00:00:11.100
Welcome to the Me, Myself, and You podcast.

1
00:00:11.100 --> 00:00:15.400
My name is Sara and I'm your host and I am glad to have you here today today.

2
00:00:15.400 --> 00:00:22.300
I wanted to talk a little bit about that transition from freelancing to working full-time.

3
00:00:22.900 --> 00:00:32.595
I made that transition almost a year ago now is maybe a little less end of November of 2019 and I will say it's definitely a

4
00:00:32.595 --> 00:00:40.800
unique experience since I was only working in the office for about four months before covet happened before all of the chaos.

5
00:00:40.800 --> 00:00:50.996
So I just kind of wanted to talk about where that was tough and kind of how to adjust and how I adjusted and how to make that

6
00:00:50.996 --> 00:00:58.279
work because it's definitely different going from freelancing and being in charge of your own schedule and your own everything

7
00:00:58.279 --> 00:01:00.100
to working for somebody else.

8
00:01:00.100 --> 00:01:09.100
So I think the biggest thing for me that was hard with going from freelancing to working full-time with the schedule and I think

9
00:01:09.100 --> 00:01:17.350
that the same for a lot of Freelancers and the appeal of freelancing is the schedule when you're when you're freelancing you

10
00:01:17.350 --> 00:01:22.600
very much can function on whatever schedule you want to function on for me.

11
00:01:22.600 --> 00:01:26.200
I still worked pretty typical like work days.

12
00:01:26.200 --> 00:01:33.928
I would say I worked Monday through Friday usually and didn't work like super weird hours, but I would say I probably had

13
00:01:33.928 --> 00:01:34.600
shorter days.

14
00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:40.100
I didn't necessarily wake up and work every day Monday through Friday.

15
00:01:40.100 --> 00:01:41.800
It kind of depended on the day.

16
00:01:41.800 --> 00:01:50.422
I would just kind of adjust and change as I needed and it really just buried quite a bit within certain restrictions, I guess

17
00:01:50.422 --> 00:01:51.500
for me personally.

18
00:01:51.500 --> 00:01:59.268
I found it better to have somewhat set working hours so that I wasn't losing my mind but there's definitely a change with that

19
00:01:59.268 --> 00:02:03.800
when you go from freelancing to full-time, you know, you're not working for yourself.

20
00:02:03.800 --> 00:02:06.500
You're most likely working in an office.

21
00:02:06.500 --> 00:02:13.321
So you have set hours and even if you're not working in an office, you probably have fairly set hours and you're answering to

22
00:02:13.321 --> 00:02:19.857
somebody else for your hours worked and your schedule and you're not able to just like drop everything if you're having for me

23
00:02:19.857 --> 00:02:22.700
if you're having a bad mental health day or whatever.

24
00:02:22.700 --> 00:02:25.100
You can't just not work that day.

25
00:02:25.300 --> 00:02:27.800
It's definitely different in that aspect.

26
00:02:27.800 --> 00:02:34.434
That's something I really liked about freelancing was being able to take a day off if I just woke up and was having a really

27
00:02:34.434 --> 00:02:34.700
hard.

28
00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:42.790
Time I could just take the day or you know, if I wanted to focus on something else there was that I really had a lot of control

29
00:02:42.790 --> 00:02:46.500
and you kind of lose some of that aspect with a full-time job.

30
00:02:46.500 --> 00:02:53.300
So in terms of adjusting to that, I think it's really important to kind of basically rebuild your routine.

31
00:02:53.300 --> 00:03:01.100
Your routine is going to look a lot different when you start working full time and going into the office and you know being on a

32
00:03:01.100 --> 00:03:06.800
schedule where you probably have more meetings with people more set meetings more clear hours that sort of thing.

33
00:03:06.900 --> 00:03:13.897
So it's important to kind of rebuild your routine in general from your morning to your evening and everything's kind of going to

34
00:03:13.897 --> 00:03:21.200
evolve a little bit and maybe it's figuring out which pieces you get to keep and where they go and that sort of thing.

35
00:03:21.200 --> 00:03:27.555
It's just overall changing things up in that aspect not thinking that you can still function on the similar routine, you know,

36
00:03:27.555 --> 00:03:29.000
it's going to be different.

37
00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:34.600
It's you know, you might you'll have to get up and get ready for the day in a way that you might not have before might.

38
00:03:34.900 --> 00:03:42.014
More accelerated or you know, you don't necessarily, you know, sometimes I didn't like completely get ready before I started

39
00:03:42.014 --> 00:03:50.552
working for the day when I was freelancing that sort of stuff learning to set boundaries as a full-time employee is a big piece

40
00:03:50.552 --> 00:03:56.600
that has been something that I've struggled with more because it was it being a full-time employee.

41
00:03:56.600 --> 00:04:04.600
It's kind of that feeling of feeling like, oh they own me because I have a salary but that's not necessarily entirely true.

42
00:04:04.700 --> 00:04:07.000
Ooh, you know you generally have somewhat set.

43
00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:15.909
Okay, you're expected to work X number of hours a week something along those lines and you're able to kind of you have to set

44
00:04:15.909 --> 00:04:20.899
those boundaries in your hours, especially if you're working from home and working full-time.

45
00:04:20.899 --> 00:04:22.300
That's where it gets tough.

46
00:04:22.300 --> 00:04:30.100
And I know that's been tough during this quarantine thing super fun, but setting set ours is very helpful.

47
00:04:30.300 --> 00:04:32.800
Try not to respond to emails that 11 o'clock at night.

48
00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:34.600
It took that people don't expect you to respond.

49
00:04:34.800 --> 00:04:42.400
Melts at 11 o'clock at night regularly, you know it set those expectations and then always seek out the positives.

50
00:04:42.400 --> 00:04:48.800
I know that it can be really easy to start missing that freelance life that like freedom and all of that.

51
00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:53.300
But remember the positives of having a full-time job for me.

52
00:04:53.300 --> 00:04:56.500
It's been having really awesome co-workers.

53
00:04:56.500 --> 00:05:04.600
I really love my team and of course consistent income is always a perk of having a full-time salary.

54
00:05:04.700 --> 00:05:05.800
Salary job.

55
00:05:06.200 --> 00:05:11.500
So yeah, I guess that's kind of it as far as transitioning freelancing to full-time.

56
00:05:11.600 --> 00:05:15.200
So hopefully you found this episode at least a little interesting maybe a little helpful.

57
00:05:15.200 --> 00:05:20.100
If you're doing something similar definitely would love to have you subscribe follow this podcast.

58
00:05:20.100 --> 00:05:22.400
You can find me on Instagram at @sarastrives.

59
00:05:23.100 --> 00:05:23.500
Yeah.

60
00:05:23.600 --> 00:05:24.400
I think that's it.

61
00:05:24.400 --> 00:05:27.500
So I will talk at you again soon.