We become freelancers for a variety of reasons. One, you get to work for a great boss. Two, you can work from the comfort of your own home. Three, no one cares how far down your personal hygiene standards go.

Another big reason I often hear freelancers giving for their career choice is the freedom that comes from setting our own hours. This rather vague statement implies that we can either work into the wee hours of the morning, get up at 5am everyday and work until lunch, or shove random half hours of work in between the other pressing needs of having a life and/or family.

But how many hours does this entail overall?

Working from home is tricky because you aren’t punching in and out, you don’t take regular breaks, and if you’re like me, you always do a quick email check before you (insert pretty much any activity here). I find it hard to track the total number of hours I spend working for this very reason. For example, I just got done writing about fifteen catalog descriptions. It took me an hour, but the only reason I know it took an hour is because I was watching one of my favorite television shows while I did it. Does that mean I was really working? Does it count as an hour? A half hour?

For some clients, I get paid by the hour, so of course I keep a tally. I do this with a stopwatch widget I downloaded to my desktop. However, not all clients pay this way, so I don’t always keep track. I also don’t keep track of:

• Time spent communicating by email

• Time spent doing the “business” side of the business

• Time spent bidding on jobs

• Time spent reading blogs and getting sidetracked by cool, newly-discovered websites during research

• Time spent in meetings and on the phone with Lorna

• Time spent ordering another coffee when working from Starbucks

• Time spent trying to distract my daughter so I can have a few more stolen minutes on the computer

The list can go on and on.

The point is, I have virtually no solid concept of how many hours a week I work. I rarely get the opportunity to just sit down and work for solid chunks of time, so estimating is fairly difficult. Plus, when you work in an office, you almost never work the entire eight hours. There are breaks, stolen internet browsing moments, phone calls from home, and even trips to the bathroom. How many freelancers actually count all those activities as part of their “working day?”

When asked, I usually say that I work about twenty-five hours per week. This, of course, varies depending on my current workload, but I think it’s pretty consistent. (And when I say twenty-five hours, that includes two or three hours spent “working” in front of the television.)

So, how many hours a week do you work? How many hours should freelancers expect to work to make a realistic and livable wage?

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