6 Tips to Manage Your Time Wisely as a Freelancer
If you’re a freelancer, you might have experienced the feeling of true happiness when you first realized that there is no bossing around. And when you caught envious glances of regular office workers on you the thought that you are the master of the world also visited your head. But that all lasted for not that long. Because one day you understood what the price for managing your time on your own was… Or, to be more correct, the price for failing to manage your time when you’re a freelancer.
Your time is not only about your money in this case, but also about your professional reputation and overall success. But if you regret becoming a freelancer quite often, don’t hurry to quit the game. Take your time to read the simple advice below on how to manage your time wisely, instead!
Manage Your Time Wisely with These Tips
1. Organize Your Workstation and Schedule
This point is about both the physical space you work in and the time you work at. It is crucial to treat both aspects seriously as they influence your work mood and organization enormously. Needless to say, this imprints on the quality of your work, too.
First of all, your working space should have sufficient lighting, be free of dust and any clutter. This will allow you to concentrate better and show better results in a shorter time. Another meaningful thing in organizing your workstation is the presence of noise. Speaking generally, the quieter your space is the better, but there can be different opinions on this question.
The time you work is maybe the most principal thing in your work routine. If you don’t have any specific preferences or wishes on this subject, most likely you will find sticking to the regular 9 a.m – 5 p.m. schedule absolutely ok.
Whatever work schedule you choose, time-saving will always be among your priorities. If you’re a site owner and care about checking your backlink profile or if link building is your main responsibility, this link building outsource service will help you to save a lot of your time!
2. Look into Your Biorhythms
It’s no secret that as living creatures people adhere to the natural clocks in them. Some of us are more productive in the morning, some – in the evening, and there also are those who show their best productivity in the afternoon. At certain times of the day, we can show high energy, at others – we, on the contrary, are unable to pull ourselves together. Hence, if you work deeply at your high-energy hours, you will show awesome quality. And, on the contrary, if you keep working when your energy level is low, it won’t bring you any worthy results. So, take your time to investigate the level of your activity within different timeframes, and use it to your benefit!
3. Try Working in Short Bursts
If you are in trouble with organizing your work time and often catch yourself slacking off and throwing your time away, try working in short bursts. But note that this fits not everyone. If you’re creative and used to manage your time on your own and all in all can somehow pull yourself together, you can even find this technique overwhelming and ineffective.
But if things go another way and you distinctively feel that you need help to manage your time, give it a try. The technique is called Pomodoro and implies working in short 25-minutes shifts changing with 5-minutes breaks. After completing four 25-minutes shifts in a row you’re given the big 15 minutes’ break. For many professionals in different spheres, this technique proved to help organize their time and give cool results of their work!
Another effective strategy to enhance the Pomodoro technique is by incorporating time tracking for freelancers. Time tracking tools can provide a clear overview of how your short bursts of work add up, making it easier to analyze productivity patterns and identify areas for improvement.
4. Try Changing Your Workplace Sometimes
Even if you have organized your workplace perfectly so that you could work in it concentratedly and for a long time every day, one day you can find it boring. This can especially be true for creatives, such as designers, copywriters, artists, etc. The thing is that your workplace should inspire you. If your workstation inspires you every single day in any circumstances, you’re an ultimately lucky guy or girl and skip this point. But if your workplace inspires you not that often, we advise you to think about changing it to another one. Should you work from a notebook it won’t be problematic for you at all. Just move with your compact machine to another desk in a co-working space, another restaurant, or just another room or nook of the same room in your home if you work from there.
5. Say “No” to Any Distractions
Distractions are the first enemy of your work. They kill your productivity and concentration just at once without asking. If you want to work productively, show high-quality work results, and end your projects on time and even ahead of deadlines, you should get unavailable for any distractions. In other words, – eliminate any distractions before they even appear, i.e. prevent them all.
If you work at home and if you’re not alone there, notify your family members when you’re starting to work and ask them to not disturb you while you’re working. For more convenience, use your earphones to signal about your busyness – so that when inputted it would mean that you’re unavailable for any queries.
But being alone does not protect you from being distracted. All those e-mails, chats in messengers, or just notifications from different apps on your phone can suck out your attention, concentration, and productivity not any less. To prevent them all by one move – just turn off the Internet on your smartphone! To check all your correspondence without having to sacrifice your work, just do it in the morning while having breakfast, or devote your attention to it right after you ended your work.
And whether you’re alone or not, you stay guardless in face of any noise, which is known to be among the best killers of any possible productivity and concentration. Still, if you face any noise that is flushing all your inspiration down the toilet, you are not that hopeless. The monotonous and natural sound of rain can help you tune yourself for work and concentrate.
6. Don’t Multitask!
Yes, the ability to multitask is appreciated in many companies and is listed in descriptions of many vacancies. But this only means that it’s beneficial for the company (as it allows It to save on its workforce). As for an ordinary employee, being occupied with several tasks at once can only harm one’s work quality and productivity.
And if you take multiple tasks to be completed at a time, you likely will have to sacrifice your work quality and will accomplish your job in a rush. And this all can end up for you in losing your professional reputation. So, you’d better not take several projects to work on at the same time. Work on each of them on a standalone basis, one after another – and you will not need to sacrifice a bit of your work quality and professional reputation!
Manage Your Time Wisely and Optimize Your Work
So now you know a bit more about how to optimize your freelance working regime. We could make this list far longer and include 10 more points, but we wanted it to feel and look lighter and easier to perceive and understand. Just investigate your nature, understand at what hours of the day you’re most productive, use it to your advantage. Don’t overload yourself with multiple tasks as it inevitably will lead to the deprivation of your work quality. Keep away from any sorts of distractions and noises, organize your workspace. Following all the points of this article’s shortlist of advice, you will notice the rise of your energy very quickly. So, stay working as a freelancer and allow yourself to feel like the master of the world just by having learned to be a good manager of your precious time!
6 Tips to Manage Your Time Wisely as a Freelancer
- Organize your workstation and schedule
Speaking generally, the quieter your space is the better.
- Look into your biorhythms
If you work deeply at your high-energy hours, you will show awesome quality.
- Try working in short bursts
For many professionals, the Pomodoro technique proved to help organize their time and give cool results of their work.
- Try changing your workplace sometimes
If your workplace inspires you not that often, we advise you to think about changing it to another one.
- Say “no” to any distractions
Distractions are the first enemy of your work. They kill your productivity and concentration just at once without asking.
- Don’t multitask!
Being occupied with several tasks at once can only harm one’s work quality and productivity.
