2014 was the first year where I religiously tracked where I spent my freelance time, which includes nights and weekends work, outside of my full-time job.
Here is the breakdown:
In 2014 I spent on average about 13 hours a week outside of my full-time job. I work a consistent 40 hours a week at my full-time job, so I generally work about 53 hours a week in total.
Development includes all of the time that I spend to complete a client project, or one of my own side projects. Of the 473 hours, 75 hours were spent on my own projects.
The blogging category simply includes all of the time that I spend writing blog posts. This comes out to about 3 hours per published post.
Education is made up of time I spend specifically focused on learning something new. I'm not sure how to interpret this number, as I spend almost all day, every day learning. The distinction is that this is time I set aside to read development books, watch conference talks, attend Meetups, read blog posts, etc.
This is specifically non-billable time. If I need to learn something to complete a client project, I would categorize that time under development. In addition, this does not include the hundreds of hours of podcasts that I listen to over the course of a year.
I need to rethink how I categorize education time, as I feel this number under represents the effort I put into keeping up with my craft.
I've been looking for my perfect job outside of freelancing for quite a while now. I like my current position fairly well, but I know there is a better job out there for me. This time includes interviews, email exchanges, negotiation, resume writing, and everything else that goes into searching for a new job.
29 of the 48 hours were spent on a project that I wrote as part of an interview process.
Clearly, I would like to make this 0 hours in 2015.
Client meetings are face-to-face meetings (including video conferences), not email exchanges. I'm very pleased with this number, my clients have all been very reasonable and appropriate with my time.
Administration is made up of answering client emails, doing my own software upgrades, Meetup organization, and some research. Administration is anything that doesn't fall into one of the above categories.