At the end of every quarter I’m going to conduct an analysis of my time tracking, income and clients and projects. I use Toggl to track my time, and it is particularly helpful to let me know how much I am earning per hour for projects in which I’m paid per word or per project. It also tells me how much time it takes me to do certain types of projects, instead of just guessing. That is valuable information the next time I create a similar proposal and set a project rate for a potential client. In the first quarter of 2021, I worked an average of 23 hours per week. I actually wanted to increase that, which I did. In Q2 I worked an average of 28 hours a week. This includes paid work, administrative work, networking and marketing. I also made sure to take a vacation. Once I was fully vaccinated, I drove to Indiana to visit my parents. Unfortunately, because the vacation wasn’t planned out way in advance like I usually do, I still had deadlines I had to meet. I ended up working a few hours on average each day for the week I was there, which none of us liked. I decided to leave a few days early because I was eager to have a completely work-free, email-free staycation at my house. So, when I got home, I took four days completely off work, followed by a few easier work days. That time with my parents and then time off completely from work at home rejuvenated me. In fact, I felt like I worked a lot of hours in May and not so many in June. However, when I looked at my time tracking for the two months, I actually worked more hours per week in June than the weeks when I felt frenzied and overwhelmed in May. In June, one week I worked 32 hours and another week I worked almost 35 hours. I think this is a really important finding—I felt less stress, less overwhelmed and more on task after taking off just four days at home, even though I was working more hours. It is so critical to take time off each week and take real vacations or staycations. I see too many freelancers who don’t take even those little breaks. That is a recipe for burnout. I am planning to visit my parents later this summer. This time, I have strategically planned when I will go. I chose a time that has fewer deadlines, and I am purposefully not taking projects that I will have to work on at that time. I also made a lot more money in Q2. You might attribute that to me working more, but I think it was the reverse. I got more work; therefore, I had to work more to do that work. I had a very lean March for me, and then April through June were really strong months. May was my best month of the year. I haven’t spent a lot of time on marketing recently, and July and August are looking a little lean right now. I have a monthly income goal that I try to meet, and I haven’t quite met that yet for my July and August planning. I like to know that that income goal is possible a few months out. I don’t like to work week to week. So, July is really going to be a time that I need to do some marketing and networking and letting my current editors know that I am available for new projects and writing assignments. I want to mention a project I briefly mentioned in a previous episode. It’s an example of a new client that pays less than the per-word rate I normally accept. But I accepted the work for a couple of reasons: I wanted to work for this client and their topic, and it sounded like it would be more consistent work, if not that lucrative. Because I track my time religiously, I know that although this is below my typical per-word rate that I made over $100 an hour on the projects I’ve done for them. Having the ability to work fast and knowing the subject matter earned me that higher hourly rate. I want to talk a bit more about how I get clients, what type of marketing I do and what I mean by referrals, which I have said is my No. 1 way to get clients. (See episode #65 of Deliberate Freelancer from July of 2020.) Recently in the Freelance Content Marketing Writer Facebook group, people wer