One of the most common risks of working for yourself is ending up available to clients at any hour, answering calls and messages outside any reasonable hours, which in the long run wears down both the professional and the quality of their work.
Define working hours and communicate them
Setting clear opening hours (for example, 8am to 7pm on weekdays) and communicating them explicitly to clients, for example in your voicemail message or message signature, helps set a reasonable expectation from the very first contact.
Tell real urgency from perceived urgency
Not every out-of-hours call is a real emergency: learning to distinguish a genuine urgency (an active water leak) from an enquiry that can wait until the next day avoids constant interruptions to your rest over matters that don't require it.
The benefits of setting limits, for the business too
A rested professional with time to switch off performs better during working hours, and conveys a more organised image to the client than someone who always seems to be "firefighting" with no defined schedule.
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