I have a weekly cadence with my clients. This means they expect me to make progress every week. But there's no expectations for any particular day.

I'm also careful not to over-commit. I leave myself room to breathe. If I decide to go beyond that and work extra, everyone's happy. If I don't, that's okay too.

My day is a blank canvas. I get to decide how I'll fill it. What am I most curious or excited about? What do I want to work on, if anything?

Being able to set your own hours as a freelancer doesn't mean choosing 8-4 vs 10-6. It's being free to take a day off to play with your kids or finish an exciting book. It means being able to live the cozy life you need for a healthy body and mind.

Ultimately it means my work is higher quality because I'm not rushing, I'm well rested, and I love the work I do.

A weekly cadence won't work for all clients, nor for all freelancers, but it suits me and my clients perfectly.

The past few months, for the first time, I prioritized coziness & rest, minimizing stress and ambition and mindfully enjoying travelling with my family.

I just dropped my son off at school, and now I feel it's time to start a new season of focusing on my business again.

But I feel the need to bring that coziness back into my professional life and find ways to do bigger things while still being restful and relaxed.

It'll be a big challenge, but it's very important to me to get this right.

I don't want to hustle. I'm not desperate to be more successful. What I desire is more creativity, more freedom, more fun, following my curiosity and joy and excitement through my work. I want to help more people, particularly freelancers like myself. I want to go beyond my client work and work on projects for myself.

In the past it's been hard to juggle that stuff with my need to trade hours for money. That's where the challenge comes in, to do more but to keep it fun and cozy and stress free.

I think I've come to see how lowering expectations for myself really helps to take the pressure off. I'm hoping to thread that needle of doing more in some areas, maybe doing less in others to compensate, and being very mindful and measured in making sure I'm able to handle it all gracefully.