A day with illustrator Ellen Porteus

With a host of impressive clients such as Facebook, Apple, Adidas, and The New York Times, knowing how much to take on can be a puzzling balancing act for freelance illustrator and animator Ellen Porteus.

“The last five years of freelance have been a learning curve. I now try to cap my workload to four jobs at one time. Even if they are small, thinking creatively still takes up a lot of your brain capacity.”

Working from her beautiful home in Abbotsford has meant daily habits have become easier to stick to compared to when she was working in a studio environment.

“I wasn’t eating properly, I wasn’t exercising, I wasn’t sleeping, I would just work constantly. I realised I needed to reset the way I was prioritising things, so I moved into a home studio to focus on myself and develop some self-care habits.”

While self-care activities such as writing a to-do list before bed each night, exercising daily, avoiding eating lunch at your desk, and making time for relationships is the ideal many working from home aspire to, as Ellen reminds us, every day is a work in progress.

“Things go wrong all the time and I struggle with projects or taking on too much. I’m trying to have variety in my day and work so I don’t burn out or feel stagnant.”

Working from home routine

Morning

I’m not really a morning person – I’ll wake up around eight o’clock and head to a nine o’clock exercise class nearby.

By the time I get back home it’s mid-morning and I’m ready to go. I’ll usually start with answering any important emails and then look at my to do list.

I usually have at least one deadline a day – a client project is often broken into smaller chunks so it’s far less daunting. Some days will be labour-heavy days where I’ll be drawing or animating. Other days are more idea-focused, so I’ll be coming up with concepts for a brief, either thinking up ideas in my head or sitting down with a pen and paper.

If I’m thinking about a project – be it in the shower, while taking a walk, or talking it out with other people – I don’t see that as procrastination. Procrastination for me is online shopping!

Lunch

I’ll often have a home-cooked lunch or I’ll go to Victoria Street [in Richmond] and get a Bánh mì.

My partner is also self-employed, so sometimes he’s at home and we’ll both work downstairs together and then have lunch together.

One of the benefits of working from home is being able to fit in the self-care stuff – it’s easier to exercise because you don’t need to commute with a backpack of gym clothes.

Afternoon

The work tends to flow on from the morning. I don’t divide my day into X amount of time for sketching or X amount of time for admin, I just allow myself do whatever needs to be done over the course of the day.

I try to keep the days just for work, but if I’m really in a rut, I’ll go and see a friend, or head to NGV or something that still feels inspiring and creative, but gets me away from my desk.

Evening

I try to finish working by six o’clock. What has helped give me that stop time is setting aside time for dinner. It’s no longer just a half an hour break before getting back to work – it’s going to the shops to get ingredients, cooking, and sitting down at the dinner table and talking.

There’s nothing too structured happening after dinner – I leave it free to just do whatever I feel like – if that’s getting some work done so I can sleep a bit better at night, then I’ll do that. If it’s just totally relaxing and having some drinks at the pub or watching Netflix, then I’ll do that.

Bedtime

Before bed I’ll write my to-do list so I know what I need to do as soon as I sit down the next day.

I need lots of sleep – I just bought one of those memory foam pillows, which I can’t believe I didn’t do years ago because it’s so good.

Next, I think I need an alarm clock so I can put my phone in another room at night because I dislike getting up in the morning and scrolling through Instagram before I’m fully awake.

Working from home tip

It’s fine to experiment with what works for you. It’s such a privilege to be able to dictate your own working routine and part of honouring that privilege is finding out what’s really important to you and what works for you – and, importantly, not feeling guilty that your day doesn’t look like someone else’s.

Madeleine Dore is a freelance writer and the creator of Extraordinary Routines.