It’s the weekend and, for most people in the IT world, it’s a welcome two-day break from the drudgery of work. However, part of the ‘fun’ of being a freelancer is that you can work any time: evenings, holidays or weekends. I’m doing it now!
There are several benefits to working at the weekend:
- there are few work disruptions, such as telephone calls or emails from clients
- it’s extra hours to get stuff done, and
- you can complete lots of small administrative tasks which you normally put off (accounting, backups, etc.)
Understandably, there are drawbacks:
- children and family members are more likely to disturb you
- you may have commitments or miss social functions, and
- all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!
Some freelancers refuse to work weekends. Others will use the weekend as normal working days. I suspect many will work if they absolutely must complete a project before Monday morning.
Personally, I don’t mind putting in a few extra hours on Saturday or Sunday. It feels like ‘bonus’ time if it would otherwise be wasted watching television or shouting at the kids! I also find it quite productive — I tend to concentrate harder because there are fewer distractions and I have an incentive to finish quicker.
SitePoint is a resource for working web developers. There are those who visit the site for other reasons, but many use it to research techniques or reference web development technologies. The statistics indicate we receive around half the number of visitors at the weekend compared to mid-week. Even taking global time-zones into account, it shows there are a large number of people actively working on Saturday and Sunday.
We’d like to know whether you work at the weekend? Do you prefer it? Do you attempt different projects? Please cast your vote on the SitePoint poll or leave your comments below.
Craig BucklerCraig is a freelance UK web consultant who built his first page for IE2.0 in 1995. Since that time he's been advocating standards, accessibility, and best-practice HTML5 techniques. He's created enterprise specifications, websites and online applications for companies and organisations including the UK Parliament, the European Parliament, the Department of Energy & Climate Change, Microsoft, and more. He's written more than 1,000 articles for SitePoint and you can find him @craigbuckler.
