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Freelancers: 3 Steps to Effective Time Management

Time management can be difficult, especially when you’re first starting out. Should you plan every second of every day? Should you go with no schedule at all? How much time should you spend emailing, blogging, looking for new work? This post covers some important things I learned about time management from my own experience, and it is especially focused the time spent doing things that actually grow your business (rather than say, how to keep a good schedule in general).

First, identify the top 5 activities that you want to do every day to grow your business. How do you know what grows your business? Identifying what grows your business can be tricky, especially if you are just starting out. This is where you’re going to have to put your trust in people who’ve been there and done that. Check out my post, “Top 5 Ways To Grow Your Freelance Business” for some ideas as well as links to posts by others on this topic.

Here are my top 5 things. But first, please note that these 5 things (I’m speaking particularly about the details) may not be your 5 things, and you shouldn’t feel like they have to be. Whatever works in this post, use it. Whatever doesn’t, throw it out. (I learned that from Bruce Lee and C.S. Lewis.)

1. Blogging (”Offline” & Online, Posting on social networking sites, blogs, forums, etc.)
2. Marketing & Branding (”Offline” & Online, My Portfolio Site, Google AdWords, etc.)
3. Actively Seeking Work (”Offline” & Online)
4. Research & Planning (Whiteboarding, reading magazines and blogs in my area etc.)
5. Exercise (Body, Soul, & Mind – I can’t function at my best without the right exercise.)

Secondly, dedicate a block of time every day to doing those 3 things. And some things need more attention per day than others. For a frame of reference: I spend 1 hour each day on Blogging related stuff, and 30 minutes each on the other 4 things. That’s 2 hours of my day doing 5 things. The rest of the day, I work on whatever projects I have to do.

The idea is to do 5 things that bring your profit (whether immediately or gradually) every day, and to do them efficiently. By efficiently I mean in a way that best uses your time in balance. It’s easy to spend 4 hours every morning just reading digg, blogs that you like, sites related to your field, etc. But you have to set a fixed time (on things that are profitable) and stick to it.

Obviously, you’re going to need a way to track the time – a way that is better than looking at your watch/phone/clock. I use TimeTracker, but I’m upgrading to Harvest soon here. Here is a screenshot of what my list looks like in the morning:

I don’t spend an equal amount of time on the sub-tasks as the main task. For instance, I try not to spend too much time per day foolin with AdWords (or Analytics for that matter) because you can get lost in there. It’s too fun. And it’s not necessarily profitable. So, some days I don’t do anything at all with AdWords. Also, not every day is an “How is my SEO” day, etc.

Lastly, examine how your business has grown after 30 days and reorganize your time. This is important. Using TimeTracker (or whatever) you can look back and see how well you met your goals of spending a certain amount of time on each thing. Then you judge how your business has changed or not. Now it’s time to decide how to reorganize your time on these 5 things (if at all) OR choose different things altogether.

Here are some articles by others that may be helpful:

• Freelancing and Time Management
• Time Management Tips For Freelancers
• 6 Critical Time Management Tips
• Minimalist Time Management: Keep Your Day Open

Written by Simon Shull Foust on November 17th, 2007 · Comments (0)