---
date: 2019-03-28
modified_at: 2019-04-17
tags: [entrepreneurship]
description: How to convince companies that working part-time on multiple projects can actually improve focus, productivity, and value through cross-project learning and dedicated work days.
---
# How to convince your next freelance project that you can work parttime

 * Companies are often worried you can't focus and oversee a project if you
   don't work enough hours a week for them
 * I like to work at 2 or 3 projects at the same time as I think it's the golden
   mean. For me, this means just 12-20 hours a week per project - 16 on average.

What Companies Say:
 * You can't keep up with the sprint
 * You can't oversee planning and strategize tech stack and implementation with
   the whole team, so you can't really shine.
 * You will be distracted by other projects, you can't focus
 * If you just work 16 hours you don't commit and can't be as productive
 * We need to be certain that you can grow to 32 hours a week or more.

What I Say
You can't keep up with the sprint
If I can't keep up with the sprint, it's badly planned. If there's a weekly
sprint, there should be fewer tasks assigned to me.

You can't oversee planning and strategize tech stack and implementation with the
whole team, so you can't really shine.
That's not true. It only costs about 4 to 8 hours a week to strategize and plan
a whole project. Communicating it with the team takes a bit longer, but can done
in a few hours. That means I probably have one day left for programming (or
someone else can strategize and plan the project and I can program full-time)

You will be distracted by other projects, you can't focus
I always seperate projects by days. For example, I work monday and tuesday on
freelance project 1, wednesday and thrusday on freelance project 2, and friday
on my own project. If I have time, I work saturday on my own project too. Also,
I turn off communication for projects I'm not working on (only urgent calls).
This way, you can really focus and won't be distracted.

If you just work 16 hours you don't commit and can't be as productive
When I work on a project and it takes multiple hours to get into it, that means
the time-to-context is really bad. If this is the case, then the developer
ecosystem needs improvements. If it's alright, I can be in the zone within an
hour, so my productiveness and value is almost linear with the amount of days I
work.

Futhermore, I think it's important to say that, the other days I work on
different projects, I will work in the same or very similar tech stacks and
development ecosystems. This means I will learn a lot of things that I can apply
at our project. I can make things that are applied at multiple projects too.
When mistakes happen at one project, I learn from it and can prevent it at the
other. This is a very big difference compared to just working on this tech stack
/ dev ecosystem for one project. I think working on 2 or 3 projects at the same
time makes me smarter, more productive and more motivated.

We need to be certain that you can grow to 32 hours a week or more.
I can't give you this guarantee. If this happens, it means I have to let all my
other projects go. I will only do this if this is really a project I will go for
and believe in. To achieve this, it needs to be a really good opportunity and it
will take some time to know if this is the case.