Three days a week for one client.The other two don't pay yet.
Monday to Wednesday I work for one client, on fixed days. Thursday and Friday are mine, and most weeks they earn nothing. Why I chose fixed days, what the other two days are really for, and what the setup costs.
On Thursdays and Fridays I don't earn anything. Something is happening, though.
My week has two parts. Monday to Wednesday I work for one client, on fixed days. Thursday and Friday are mine. People usually ask about the second part, so most of this article is about it.
Why fixed days
I needed a floor. A sum that comes in every month and that I can live on, whatever else happens.
That is why I asked for fixed days and not hours "when needed". Hours when needed are easy to agree to. They also disappear in a quiet month, and a quiet month is exactly when I need the floor.
Fixed days help the client too. They know when I am there. On the days I am away, what they need is a rhythm they can count on: the same three days every week and a short update on where things stand.
What Thursday and Friday really are
They are not days off. A four-day weekend happens, but rarely.
Last Thursday and Friday I worked on my own dashboard, read, and wrote LinkedIn posts. Other weeks it is my portfolio, this website, or the setup I use to run all of it. Calls with people who might want to work with me go there too. And I keep space free for the next client, so that when one comes, I don't have to find the time somewhere else.
Most weeks those days earn nothing. I work for myself, on things that don't pay yet.
But something is happening. People get in touch. I have started building products. I started posting on LinkedIn, which I never did before.
What crosses from one part to the other
The two parts feed each other more than I expected. There is one rule for how: what I build for the client stays with the client. What crosses over is what I learn.
The client days give me what my own days cannot: a real company, real teams and real deadlines. What I learn there goes into my CV and into how I build everything else.
One example. I have run trainings on AI tools, and I saw where people get stuck. My starter kit, free on GitHub, starts exactly there. I wrote it from scratch as my own product. In September I used it in my first training for someone outside.
So the paid days are not only paying for the free ones. They are also where I learn what is worth building on the free ones.
What it costs
The bigger risk is that work slowly fills the free days.
Three fixed days hold only if I keep them. Good ideas never run out. If I said yes to every one, three days would turn into a full week, and the part that was meant to build something new would get nothing.
Adding more at the same time does not work for me either. I work best focused on one thing. A third piece of work would have to come after the others, not next to them.
Freelancing with a floor
For a while I avoided the word freelancing. It sounded like odd jobs. I use it now, because what I have is steady: three days a week with one client, on days they can count on, and two days that are mine, to build what might pay later.
If you want a week like this, start with the floor, not with the free days. The free days only work because the floor is there. Without it, every quiet Thursday feels like failing. With it, a quiet Thursday is simply what building something new costs.
Most weeks, Thursday and Friday don't pay. Yet.