A big reason why people choose to work as freelancers is freedom – the freedom to choose your projects, your work hours, and your work location. Freedom makes freelancing a joyous career, one where the freelancer has all the flexibility to balance work and life.
The hardest part of freelancing, paradoxically, is also freedom. In a conventional 9 to 5 corporate job, your tasks and deadlines are defined. You know what you have to deliver, how long you’ve got, and where you have to work from. This rigid structure, in a way, eliminates the burden of planning a workday. It also instills accountability and ensures you deliver.
When freelancing, the burden of choosing your tasks, setting aside the time to complete them, and creating a positive work environment is on you. Without the right tools and knowledge, things can quickly get out of hand. You can lose an entire day without having completed any tasks and consequently have earned nothing. You can take on more than you can deliver and end up missing deadlines and upsetting clients. Your workspace can be too distracting for productivity. You get the idea.
It all boils down to time management. If a freelancer has to learn one skill to be successful at their craft, it is time management. In this article, we list 8 techniques that you can use to succeed as a freelancer through proper time management.
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Why Track Time Tracking as a Freelancer?
It improves workflow
The advantage of a conventional 9 to 5 job structure is that it creates boundaries between tasks and also between work and personal life.
When you work as a freelancer, those boundaries are often blurred – one task is put on hold for another, you miss lunch, work hours drag on into the wee hours of the night, and so on. To be productive, you need to create a workflow and define a routine. A routine not only helps you be more effective but also gives you a sense of how your day will shape out, and this comes in handy when communicating deadlines to clients.
Helps avoid (or manage) distractions
Distractions are a major hurdle for every freelancer. When there’s no one to report to and a reporting tool, and no one overseeing your progress, you tend to get easily distracted, and before you know it, you have spent the entire day watching Game of Thrones.
But when you create a routine that includes breaks for distractions, you will find it much easier to focus on work. What if you use productivity tracking software to better manage distractions with a well-structured routine that incorporates scheduled breaks?
Helps you prioritize projects and tasks
Saying ‘no’ to a project is very hard as a freelancer. Every project is a paycheck, and freelancers tend to accept every alluring job that comes their way.
That in itself is fine. It’s actually great; the more you work, the more you earn. It only becomes an issue when you bite more than you can chew. Time management helps you in two ways – one is you know how much time you have free in the next few weeks so you can make better decisions when projects come your way. And two, you can prioritize tasks and work on them one at a time without bouncing from one to another and compromising on quality.
You can make better financial decisions
When you track your projects and tasks, you know exactly how much you will be earning each day, week, and month. This gives you a sense of how your finances are going to shape up.
Managing finances is an essential aspect of being a freelancer because you are accountable for how much you earn. Once you know how much you will be making, you can better decide when to take on new projects.
You are, after all, still a professional
This one is important. It’s easy for freelancers to forget that they are still professionals. In fact, freelance is a client-facing job, so freelancers need to behave more professionally than they would at a corporate job.
Nothing turns off clients more than delayed projects. Your reputation as a freelancer is what will help you grow.
8 Time Tracking Techniques For Freelancers
1. Order projects based on priority
Jot down all the projects you have accepted and list them based on priority. Priority can be based on:
- The urgency of work – A client needs something done urgently
- Your relationship with the client – A long time client’s project can be given a higher priority
- Your need for pay – You can prioritize a project if it will get you paid faster or a higher sum
- First come, first serve – this one is self-explanatory.
Once you have prioritized your projects, schedule them for the week/month. Always take breaks into account and add an extra day or two for each project just so you have some leeway.
Tip – Use tools like Trello (a free project management tool) to track your projects. As you continue breaking down projects into tasks and batches, you’ll have a hierarchical structure that is difficult to manage on post-it notes, and project management tools are really handy.
2. Break projects into tasks and create a to-do list
Once you have an overview of your work week (by prioritizing projects), you should break everything down into tasks and create a to-do list. This makes the entire week more manageable and gives you an even better sense of how your week will progress. Tools like Trello are handy here:
3. Batch your tasks and create a routine
The final step is breaking or grouping (depending on size) your tasks into batches and planning when to do them or creating a routine.
For example, if you create a task to read through ten articles as a part of your research for a whitepaper, breaking this task down into two batches of five pieces with a short break in between will prove to be more fruitful.
Once you have created batches, give each one a start time and an uncertain end time. Make sure you schedule short breaks in between each batch of work using a work schedule maker like the one offered by Connecteam.
4. Use a Pomodoro app to manage time and avoid distractions
Have you heard of the Pomodoro Technique? The Pomodoro Technique is a time management system in which you break your workday into 30-minute intervals, and each 30-minute interval is split into two chunks – 25 minutes of work followed by a 5-minute break.
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This technique works great for people who find it hard to focus for long periods. You can, of course, modify the intervals to your suiting. There are simple Pomodoro apps that you can use to follow this technique.
5. Use apps that take care of repetitive tasks in content writing
You will find many apps and software that take over redundant tasks saving you time. Use them!
Grammarly, for example, checks grammar and spelling in real-time to help you cut down on proofreading time.
Wordable saves you a ton of time by streamlining the process of publishing blogs from Google Docs to WordPress and Medium. Copying and pasting content from Docs to WordPress/Medium and then formatting for the platform wastes a lot of time, and you can save it with Wordable.
6. Learn to say NO
When you create a detailed routine, you will know how much time you have to spare for more projects. Yes, it’s hard to say no to projects as a freelancer, but overloading your routine will only result in poor work quality, which will ultimately cost you clients. It’s going to be counter-productive.
Also, learn to say no to client demands you cannot fulfill. Give each project the time it needs for you to deliver your best work, and if a client expects you to deliver earlier than you can, be firm and say no. Give them an explanation of why you need the time. Once you provide quality work, they will trust your judgment of time.
7. Create an environment conducive to work
Lastly, for any of this to be fruitful, you need to be in an environment that is conducive to working. If you are surrounded by distractions, no amount of apps or techniques will help you.
Fix a spot dedicated to work and when you’re there, only work. Every other spot in your house can be for breaks and distractions. You have the freedom to work from anywhere, but that doesn’t mean you cannot bring in discipline. Think about using automatic time tracking to see how many hours you spend on a task.
This has an incredible psychological effect. As you repeat this process, you will find that sitting at your work desk will automatically help you focus on work.
8. Automate hours tracking for easier payroll
Most freelancers are billed hourly, so they should take special care of tracking their working hours. Luckily the times of filling timesheets with start/end hours are gone because you can easily find a perfect online time-tracking app and payroll software for freelancers and automate this process.
The most convenient are the apps like TimeCamp, which offer a handy desktop app that fills your timesheets automatically with work hours assigned to the appropriate tasks. Based on these records, you can further create a detailed time generate invoice to your customers – all within the app.
Wrapping Up
Time management will help you avoid the danger of Parkinson’s Law. According to Parkinson’s Law, work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
In other words, if one client gives you two days to deliver a blog of 1000 words, you’ll get it done in two days. If another client gives you a month to deliver 1000 words, somehow, it will take you an entire month to complete that blog. Work will expand to fill the time you have.
Use our time management techniques and create a routine for yourself that will help you succeed as a freelancer. Whether you’re prioritizing tasks or batching work, having the right tools, like effective time-tracking software, can significantly enhance your productivity in the freelance world.
