Manage your time effectively

Working from your home office could be fancy enough to distract you from the actual work. There is no one to monitor you, no one to tell you what to do. You are the one and only person responsible for good or bad work routine.

 

Work from anywhere anytime is the best part about freelancing. If time is not managed accordingly, you might end up spending whole day and night working but still not being productive.

 

Time is the most precious resource you will ever get. In fact your freelancing career directly depends on how good you are in managing your time. Working on few time management strategies will help you keep things up-to-date and not falling out of hands.

 

 

1.Priorities

 

It sounds easy and convenient. It is actually easy and convenient if you do it right. Doing it right means successfully labeling all your tasks in an increasing or decreasing order of urgency and hence priority. Once you do it, it would be easy to plan and deliver the work.

 

Work with the highest priority should be done first and then the second highest. If you have enough time then you should do the most sensitive work in your most productive time. Most productive time could be different for all of us. For example my most productive time is from midnight to 4 am in the morning.

 

 

2. List it

 

After prioritizing your work, list it. And live by the list.

 

It is simple. Make a list of all the tasks with their priority and urgency. Start with the most urgent and crawl down the list. Strike out the completed tasks. Complete your list for the day. Make a list for the next day. It takes max 10 minutes to make a list but it most tried and tested way to complete everything within a timeline.

 

 

3. Fight the distractions

 

Distractions could be different for different people. It could be your favorite show, social media, phone or anything else. Save it for the right time and avoid being distracted in your productive time. Instead of distractions, make yourself available for emergencies.

 

 

4. Manage your meetings

 

Meetings are an integral part of a freelancer’s life. When your entire team works remote than it becomes so critical to have regular discussions. Sometimes these meetings get stretched to more than enough time and ends up ruining your work schedule. Plan the meetings accordingly so that they don’t consume all of your working hours.

 

 

5. Save time to learn

 

There is no room for a pager in the age of Smartphones. Stop updating your skills and you will soon replace the pager in above example.

 

Depending on your schedule and list, make room for new learnings everyday. Do it every day, even 15 minutes would be enough if you do it religiously. 

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Posted at - Mar 15, 2017 & Last Modified at - May 15, 2020