Ok we know, we want to work, we want to earn money, we want to get it all in Time! that’s great! but not always we can achieve this as freelancers. The problem is that we haven’t the first thing to deal with, THE TIME!
How many times you said or thought: “I can do it in three days”, “i’ll do it tomorrow”, “i have a lot of time to do it”, and then, you failed to follow the schedule? If you are busy with freelance jobs, i think many times.
This usually happens because we procrastinate work, we have no skills in scheduling our jobs, or simply because, we accept jobs we can’t deliver in time, while a lot of other commitments are waiting us (freelance jobs and routine life).
Time is gold, or maybe it’s better to say “MONEY” and sometimes we need to relax, but that’s not easy, i know.
So how we can achieve some free time?
Freelancer Time Tips – Scheduling Time
We need to Schedule, divide and give Time to what matter first. What really matters it’s our life, so we need to optimize work, accepting what we can do at our best, in less time, and with the maximum profits possible.
Ok i know also that some freelancers (like Me) can’t afford to refuse jobs (or maybe i could but… everytime i accept the job without thinking, working hard also in nighttime, and every new morning i feel dizzy). However, in this last case we need to set a good time schedule.
*Scheduling means ordering the importance of the things in our life, not only jobs and commitments! We decide what to do, and we decide also if we want to do something for money or for ourself. Remember every hour we have in this life may be quantified in money. We don’t only let time go away, we let money go away, and viceversa, we buy our time with money (that’s crazy i know, but that’s real, trust me).
My perspective? As freelancer…
I often divide my schedule in days, i work usually from monday to friday, adding to the working week the sunday morning. My typical working day is framed in 3 parts. The “morning work”, where i have the max power of the day (good for important jobs) e.g. “job A” from 8:00 to 13:00, then lunch time and some relax until 15:00. After that, we go through the second part of the day the “afternoon work” from 15:30 to 18:00 or 20:00 with some little pauses in between (i use 30 mins to focus my attention and analyze work from 15:00 to 15:30 and in some hour breaks), then i leave the third part of the day, the “night work”, for simple jobs. The third part i usually do jobs about data entry or management, not something that needs a lot of attention.
In short, My criteria to schedule work is:
- job with the most importance;
- charging times (lunch);
- free/relaxing time;
- other jobs;
- some pauses;
- easy jobs (if any) or relaxing time.
I’m used to do a lot of breaks, this because we are humans and not machines. If i work 6 hours without stopping myself, my work will be S**t, or maybe worse than the normal. That’ s what happens when we are overcommitted. “We do a lot of work without quality!”, the right one we can offer.
Tip: “Every 2 hours of work a normal man needs at least 20 mins of break. This ensure that the man (or work slave) is productive and not only obsessed by work. With breaks we are not losing time, we are investing it in quality.“
Freelancer Time Tips – Making Choices
Sometimes in our work we have to say “NO!”, because we encounter some “bad employers” (much time of work for nothing or little payments), or hard works that we can’t do properly, or we are overlooking our important family life for too long. Yes, i’m sure, sometimes we have to say NO! to our work and give time to what matter. We make the choice, and it’s all about our time.
In past, i accepted jobs with really low rates, that was “work experience”. Now i know that it’s better to avoid some kind of “Monkey work“.
I have to say that i never accepted jobs that i knew were hard, and i’m glad of it.
I often missed experiences with mi GF for working deadlines and i regret it (because my GF was mad with me and i lost more time than ever to make peace among us).
We make choices and we have to make the right ones.
Freelancer Time Tips – Setting Deadlines
When we make a contract with someone we set the “deadlines”. Almost every freelancer do the wrong thing setting the “just in time deadline” with the employer (that’s so wrong).
*Just in time deadline means setting a schedule that is equal to the minimum time we think is needed to us, to do the job.
When we set a deadline we have to add (in hard or long jobs) a minimum of 3 or 4 spare days. This ensure that we deliver the job in time, and if we deliver the job some days earlier the employer is pleased with our work.
However using a Just in time deadline is a cutting competitor tactic, useful in “freelance platforms” but not for long term relationship with clients. Why? Because we are always on the cutting edge of failing on the deadline and this make the client sad… or angry with us.
Conclusions…
We need time, we have no time. Every freelancer have no time and we need to optimize it at our best. We have to make choices and we decide them all. We know what matters and we know what to choose. We must be wise and smart in choosing deadlines, then we need to relax sometimes.
Our time is money, and money is our time.
