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Comment by 1_player | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I agree with you 100%.

In my case I am a freelancer, so I have strict deadlines and clients might expect me to work the full 8 hours or more. Hell, I've even been asked to work over the weekends and get my hourly rate adjusted accordingly.

I always decline, my flow state does not last more than 5 hours per day with plenty of lazying around on weekends, and working more than that would mean spreading it to a mediocre productivity.

Deadlines are met, and clients are happy (as far as I know).

Unless we are underachievers, I suspect many are in the same boat and would be as productive with 20% fewer hours.

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Do you charge your clients by the hour or another way?

I feel like I could be just as productive with fewer hours but there is somewhat of a financial conflict when being paid by the hour.

By the hour. I know I should bill by the day or week, but I think then clients will expect me to work a full working day, i.e. 8 hours.

This way, I don't feel like I'm ripping my clients off if I'm working only 2 hours today, or diluting my rate too much if I manage to work 12 hours tomorrow. I really enjoy this freedom.

Maybe it's like that for you but if you can charge per project with a deadline , it would give you a good flexibility even while running multiple clients in parallel which is what I do.

Which doesn't feel like ripping off by either side even if you take a whole day off if you keep the deadline accordingly.

How do you deal with changing specs? That's what scares me about fixed prices. Both of my longest freelance jobs (1+ years) were supposed to be a couple months worth of work.

I think the right way is to write the specs down clearly in the initial contract, but since most projects seem to go way past their expiration date, it would entail spending a non-trivial amount of time of continuously updating and agreeing on the new contracts.

Anyway, I often have a couple active project at a time, but no more than that because it would make scheduling my time a nightmare. And context switching halfway through the day takes a considerable amount of mental energy.

I only work against smaller companies who tend to be frank and flexible with similar ages of 30 or so.

Initially, both sides agree in what to deliver (no concrete spec but we talk until we know what needs built) at what price and that is usually enough to ask for more if other side tells me something new or if I'm getting a decent deal for monthly charges after going production, then I tend not to bother much about little extra additions.

I always ask questions as I encounter them to be sure that I'm not developing against their intention and let them see the progress continously too.

I even question whether what they want is valid or not and provide the reasoning in plain language without much technical terms why I'm complaining about it.

The only problem would be I can be slightly behind schedule often on everyone by managing 4+ clients in parallel.

Task switching seems crazy but I guess I'm trying to free up brain memory as much as I can to speed it up by not caring anything unnecessary in life (Have no TV, don't care about personally uninteresting stuff even if popular around, work from home where it's quiet etc)

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