I think most clients want you to work on their stuff full time because if they weren't in a hurry they probably wouldn't hire someone to work on their project.

The trick is that you never tell them how many hours you're giving them, let alone when those hours are. You tell them when you'll deliver what they're asking for. Anything more than that isn't relevant to them and isn't any of their business.

This can work if you’re good, otherwise you’d lose out to those who would be working fulltime and would deliver faster

But you could also charge less too so maybe that’s your advantage

Heck, I know I’d jump on anyone who’d just come over and work when they’re free and take longer, for a lower price, for home improvement type stuff

I've almost never found freelance opportunities that weren't in one of these two categories (or both):

- Bargain bin stuff that won't pay the bills unless you're completely debt-free living in an extremely LCOL area and situation (this is the stuff I started my career on, while still living with my mom)

- Full time employment redisguised as "freelancing" for tax and/or department budgeting purposes, with expected working hours/availability, expected tools (Slack or Jira or whatever), and basically everything else that would classify the arrangement as employment.

My dream would be 2-3 days a week of client work, and the rest of my time free to live life or work on patron-funded endeavors of my own imagination's creation. Alas, the market demands ruthless efficiency, so even finding 4-day FTE roles (I've now worked two of them, and would hate to go back but see the writing on the wall about it struggling to catch on) is a challenge, let alone part-time stuff.

(Disclaimer: this all comes from a US perspective. I hear in EU, and particularly in NL from some friends, that part time employment as well as part time contracts, are both much more common, but then, workers' experiences in EU almost universally seem to be better than in the US in all categories except pay, so I'm not surprised)

I agree. Almost all of the clients I worked with were in a rush. It was actually even worse than a standard job as the deadlines were a lot shorter.