How's Your Work-Life Balance These Days?

It's Monday and you are more than likely to be asked the question, "How was your weekend?" Is your response: "Great thanks!" or "I spent all weekend working."? If it is the latter, then this post is even more important. I myself have been personally and professionally inspired by a couple of social media posts that have mentioned the importance of having a healthy relationship with our work and the need to make sure we do not let our teaching job become all consuming.

One of the biggest challenges of being self-employed is maintaining a healthy work life balance. A common assumption made by many people is that once a person goes freelance they gain a lot more free time. Freelancers can theoretically choose when, where and how they work and for how long. The reality is that self-employed teachers still have to prepare lessons, mark work, write reports, email students etc. like any other classroom teacher. However, we are also responsible for our own advertising, social media engagement and management, and have to factor in time for the routine administration involved in running a business. 

When, as a self-employed teacher, you realise that it is your effort that generates students it is very easy to fall into the trap of working all hours for fear of not doing enough. Teachers who work in a physical school may be able to work out a system whereby they don't take their work home with them but when your work is literally in the next room, separating your work from your home life can seem nearly impossible. 

An article on the BBC website states that English schools face a "severe shortage" of teachers in 2018 according to a report by the Education Policy Institute. View video article here. Interestingly, a number of the former teachers featured in the video cited "workload" and "work-life balance" as being a significant contributor to their decision to leave the profession. If we want to stop this same trend occurring within the freelance teaching sector, what steps should we who work in this field take to ensure that we do not become overwhelmed, disillusioned and burnt-out? What advice would you give someone venturing into this area of teaching regarding this vital issue? What strategies have you developed and implemented to address this problem?

Here is another article that inspired me to reconsider how I organise and spend my time: How I got my life back from teaching. How do you think these strategies could be adapted for those of us teachers who work from home?