You won’t get anything done if you stretch yourself too thin.

One of the primary appeals of freelance work is the sense of freedom it brings you. You’re your own boss, you set your own hours, and you outline your own priorities. It’s quite nice, though living in that way also requires a very particular mindset. The ol’ 9 to 5, grating as it can be, does bring a familiar, adaptable structure that you don’t need to put that much thought into sticking to. When you’re working freelance, you gotta strike the balance on your working hours all on your own. If you don’t pick up enough work, you won’t make enough money. Pick up too much, and you’ll run yourself ragged.

The way you schedule your freelance work will obviously depend heavily on the kind of work that you do. If you’re writing, drawing, or anything else you can do from home, then you can easily transition between one gig and the next from your own desk. If your work is more hands-on and physical, requiring you to visit a place in person, you need to factor travel times into your schedule. If you try to run two jobs too close to each other, you’ll never have enough time to get from one to the other in a timely fashion.

Even if you are working from home, you still need to know your own limits. When daisy-chaining gigs together is easy, you can feel tempted to bang them out back to back over the entire course of a day. If you have the constitution for such a work life, you’re welcome to try, but remember that 9 to 5 jobs have designated breaks for a reason: it’s not healthy to go full throttle all day, all week. Make sure to factor proper breaks into your schedule for both meals and simple cooldowns.

Freelancing can be a very profitable career path, but remember the golden rule: money is never more important than your physical and emotional well-being.