Work-Life Balance with oDesk
I have been a member of oDesk since the 18th of August 2009. I was working in the BPO industry at the time and it took me almost a year to get out and make that leap to be a freelance or home-based worker. It was close to my daughter’s birthday but I did not care and jumped ship. It had been on my mind for years and spending 11-14 hours of my day away from my family is not my idea of having one. I got my first oDesk contract a few weeks after I resigned. It was on the 6th of June 2010 - a day before my daughter’s birthday. I am glad and thankful that a kind person was able to give me that opportunity to prove myself as an oDesk contractor.
Using oDesk as a means of taking control and achieving a sane form of work-life balance is not easy at all. It does take some work and you have to keep at it. You have to be extremely talented or extremely cheap to attain quick success but that does not last. I was one of the lucky ones and met up with a kind employer who took a chance on a newbie.
These days I work anywhere from 30-40 hours every week, sometimes its more - depending on the tasks that go my way. It may seem I have not gained time to spend with my wife and daughter but I have. I spend all of it with them, 24 hours a day for 7 days a week and 52 weeks a year. While I work, they work on their work stations alongside my work station. It is not a very good way to bring up my daughter sitting around all day in front of a computer but I am hoping she outgrows it and learns that there is more to life than the virtual one.
Things are not perfect but they are certainly better than my time being spent away from them. It has been a few years but it still remains a work in progress. Though things can become problematic and it takes hard work, one can achieve some kind of work-life balance with oDesk.
It's one thing to have your work on oDesk cut into family time...thats bad enough. But when was the deal-breaker for me was how writing cover letters for potential job after potential job was cutting into family time. I thought that was just how it was, until I found www.workersoncall.com....no cover letters required! Clients see you're online and just offer you the jobs as needed!
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