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Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?

#61

Post by Markoff »

dsr_ wrote: post #19

This sounds like you only have one customer. That's your problem. If you had six or seven customers, you would have leverage to negotiate with them. As the situation stands, you would be happy with less money for less time -- that means that you might be in a position to hire an employee to do some of the work for you.

I think you missed that I'm already at limits of my workload with one customer (no time for more) who pays me more than competition (even per task they could find cheaper people), actually my local competition without this contact I have because of my past relations charge basically half of what I charge and yes I am considering subcontracting someone, seem like best solution, but I'm still avoiding it until I can manage it by myself

Re: Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?

#62

Post by Markoff »

lgats wrote: post #24

Would your clients allow you to subcontract the work out? That way you can keep taking the full load with minimal additional work.

it should be possible, but it's too much hassle to organize it just for vacation, while I can still manage workload

Re: Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?

#63

Post by PopeDotNinja »

When I ran a business, I was afraid of taking a vacation, so I kept working really hard without a break. One day I woke up and couldn't think straight. I had worked myself stupid. So instead of taking a vacation, I simply called in sick for a week and wasn't really in a position to enjoy it. So if you're anything like me, in a sense you're going to take time off regardless. What you need to drive is take a risk and hope everything will be OK. Try taking 2 days off and seeing what happens. Everything will probably be fine, and if your company flies apart the second you step away, just know that was probably gonna happen anyway.

Re: Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?

#65

Post by kelnos »

What's the point of working so much if you don't take the time to actually enjoy your life?

How does your family tolerate you basically spending no time with them? I can't imagine that you have a healthy relationship with them.

For me, it's the opposite: my time is precious, and if I'm going to be spending it in the service of others, I need to be well-compensated for it. And even then, there are limits.

Re: Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?

#66

Post by dustinmoris »

You overthink it. Just take the goddamn break because quite frankly you need it! If I was you I’d never take less than at least two weeks holidays at once. Personally I’ve taken in total more than 3 months holiday in my last financial year and I’ve achieved more than when I was only having 5 weeks a year vacation many years ago. Don’t worry about competition. Presuming you’re doing a highly skilled job from home nobody will be able to replace you in a cost effective way if you take a few weeks off for vacation. Just the process of finding someone, the time cost of other people having to deal with finding a substitute and the onboarding, etc. all cost more than just wait for you to come back. Also they already know you and if they are happy with your output then there’s absolutely no way that you have to fear anything.

Re: Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?

#67

Post by bryanrasmussen »

I'm wondering if your job is worthwhile, the rule I always go for is that self-employed one should make twice as much per hour / or per month if working full time as one would if employed by a company.

If you are making twice as much you should be able to afford a vacation and just do it. If your family is anything like mine they would like to go on a vacation as well.

Re: Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?

#68

Post by Digit-Al »

If you need to 'justify' taking a break then think on this. Working the hours you do, non-stop, without break, is massively increasing your risk of either burnout, a mental breakdown, or a stroke. The mind and body can only take so much. Take a break fool, you can't look after your family if you collapse from overwork.

Re: Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?

#69

Post by fierarul »

song wrote: post #37

If you are working for a single client and have such micro management that your work is subdivided into tiny tasks and feel that rejecting it would be an issue, then you are not really self employed, you are a remote worker... Normally the typical advice when someone who is self employed has too much work is for them to raise their rates, but this works much better if you have more than one client since that does mea…

+1

Also note that without some vacation you are slowly drained which leads to less productivity which leads to no contract renewal. Burnout is also a real risk.

I would use the vacation to perhaps find a 2nd customer even if for a few billable hours/month, just to start another business relationship...

Re: Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?

#70

Post by tluyben2 »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #63

When I ran a business, I was afraid of taking a vacation, so I kept working really hard without a break. One day I woke up and couldn't think straight. I had worked myself stupid. So instead of taking a vacation, I simply called in sick for a week and wasn't really in a position to enjoy it. So if you're anything like me, in a sense you're going to take time off regardless. What you need to drive is take a risk and h…

I had that experience when I had a 1 person company (I had a software product but it did not make enough to hire people; it did make enough for me to live comfortably); I never dared to take off. When I finally did because it was really needed, it almost destroyed the company and I decided to sell it because this was not the intention.
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