As your clients rush into your freelancing business platform, it can be onerous for you to organize the work with sufficient quality. To do this effectively, you must plan appropriately and create a productive work schedule.
Time management for freelancers is especially significant since, in most cases, they do not have organizational accountability mechanisms to keep them on track. While this is liberating in multiple ways and probably adds quite a spark to the work you develop, it can also be a bane if you do not plan your work appropriately.
Do not get worried, though. Time management is a ubiquitous concern for freelancers. As a result, one of the most important things is to strategize within the committed time. This article will condense the wisdom that one may glean from going through the strategies of various freelancers into a bite-sized report for you to have handy whenever you sit down to organize your work.
Strategies for Time Management
Plan your deliverables according to their priority, and stick to it!
Often, it is the case that freelancers go about their work without a broader plan for the adequate targets they need to hit in a day and the timeframes that might be reasonable for them. It is not a good way of organizing one’s work. We’ve all been guilty of this, and the feeling is not that difficult to recall. The day ends. You look at the work you’ve produced, and there’s a nagging feeling in your mind that you could have done better. Perhaps much better.
The way to go about this is to set various levels of goals.
1. Set broad client goals for the entire week
2. Rank them according to tight timelines, payments, and client priority.
3. Divide those tasks into daily targets.
4. Organize them so that their completion is at least a day or two before the deadline (if you can manage it). Not only will this assist you with productivity, but it will also help you regain control of your time management as a freelancer.
Get a Good Time Management App for Freelancers
You’ve probably seen the Forest App on various productivity YouTubers’ channels. You’ve also probably got a time management software for freelancers built into your phone already (*ahem* the Reminders app? *ahem*). These apps assist you with time management strategies for freelancers. Take the schedule from the last point and organize it in your reminders app. Use a time-monitoring application like Forest to ensure that you will complete the micro-targets you’ve identified for your daily tasks. Do this regularly, and you will see first-hand how spectacular the results of your workflow can be!
Take Breaks
You cannot stress this point enough. Your brain needs time to recover from focused activities. You may, for instance, be an author looking for time management tips for freelance writers. Figuring out how to track time as a freelancer can be one of the most arduous tasks in such instances, as you may easily get lost in researching, organizing, and writing your material. Without breaks, your productivity and output will fall drastically over time. Chart out a plan to prevent this from happening.
A brilliant and provenly effective method of doing it is the Pomodoro method: 25 minutes of focused work, followed by 5 minutes of rest, repeated to fill your schedule.
Visualize Your Results
Last, you must be on top of the stage in the ultimate result. Keep visual tabs on this. You can do it by creating a Gantt chart on an excel sheet or writing it down in a notebook that you wish to use as a tracker. If you can, try to be visual when doing this—so that you have an easy method of reflecting on the state of the project when building your schedule.
Apart from Gantt charts, effective methods of doing tasks would include making ranked lists that are color-coded, creating prioritization matrices, or even story maps.
We’re happy to see you focused on making the most of your freelancing endeavors.
Effective time management is a significant pillar for succeeding as a freelancer. We hope this article added some value to your time management strategies and that you have fun implementing them too!
Enjoy the benefits of a freelance license and visa in Dubai, UAE, such as a Work Permit, Emirates ID, Residency, and Option to Sponsor Family.
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