As freelancers, we start our journey towards becoming a business owner to seek flexibility in our schedules and pursue our passions.
However, to the contrary, most often we find ourselves working around the clock, leading to exhaustion, overwhelm, and eventual burnout.
Now one of the best possible solutions to this is to hire somebody to help you out but what if you are not there financially?
What if you do not have time on your hands but cannot afford to hire somebody to help you out?
Well, that is where this article comes into the picture.
By the way just to be clear, this is not an article on time management techniques like Pomodoro or the 80/20 rule.
If you’re struggling with time management, chances are you’ve already come across these techniques and they have not worked for you.
So what is this article about?
The small changes that you can make in your daily life to get organised, regain control and create more free time.
I believe that by organising your digital space efficiently, you can retrieve items quickly, free up a lot of mental space (of continuous reminders) and ultimately manage your time effectively.
Let’s start with my top tips on how to organise your daily used apps for better time management.
WhatsApp:
Mute the notifications. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
Also, tidy up your inbox by archiving the messages you don't need to respond to. This will help you only see and not miss out on the important ones you need to reply to.
Desktop Storage:
Install Google Drive to move all the files from your computer’s storage to the cloud.
This way your download folder will not be cluttered and important documents will always be accessible.
Google Chrome:
Develop the habit of closing browser tabs you do not need to work on the next day and organising them into different bookmark folders (if needed for research).
For the tabs you need to work on, group them into tab groups, pin frequently visited sites and set your browser to reopen tabs automatically at startup.
Lastly, create separate profiles for your personal and work email. This will make sure there is no Netflix during work time and vice versa.
Google Calendar:
Treat time as a valuable and limited resource and mark every event on your calendar. Yes, even the personal ones.
If you are wondering how to sync multiple calendars so you can have one meeting booking link and ensure you don’t overbook yourself, here is a video to help you:
Gmail:
Create labels to organise your inbox and set up filters to direct specific emails to designated labels.
This ensures all the marketing emails go to their respective folders and you are only notified for client emails. Who doesn’t love a zero inbox?
Mobile apps:
Don’t clutter your phone with multiple apps. Be mindful of when and for what purpose you’re opening it for.
For example, if you open LinkedIn/Facebook every day on your desktop for outreach, uninstall the app from your phone to avoid mindless strolling.
Phone/laptop DND:
If you are creative during the morning time, do that work then, if evenings are when you are in a conversation mood, outreach then.
Knowing which activity you get in the zone for when increases your productivity and yes, keeping devices on DND helps a lot in getting focused.
And lastly, invest in a good project management tool to build your own systems and processes. This will help you become even more productive, manage multiple clients effectively and save tons of time amidst all.
My top 10 ways of how project management tools help you become productive:
Leads Pipeline: With a project management (PM) tool in place, there is no need to reinvent the wheel each time you get a new lead. It enables you to create a standard process of tracking your leads by telling you their status and other details at all times.
Send Proposal: Templatise your proposals so that each time you only have to edit a few fields, keeping the rest intact and send the proposal PDF/link to the client to look at. There is no need to create proposals from scratch.
Contract Signing: Once your lead has accepted the proposal, you do not want to wait for hours let alone days to send the contract to sign. With PM tools, you can create contracts with e-signing and send a contract PDF/URL in no time. Imagine all the brownie points you’d get for being so quick!
Generate Invoice: Create templates for once-off and recurring invoices. You only have to edit the client & project details, the investment amount and send it. What’s more is that for recurring invoices, you don’t even need to set mental reminders. Isn’t that the best?
Calendar Dashboard: Time is a limited resource which we have already established. Add tasks to your calendar view to see the exact time you need to complete the same and when you can take a walk break (also important!!!).
Vendor Collaboration: Don’t have a full-time hire, no problem. With PM software, you can add vendors as members, tag them within relevant tasks and keep track of their work at all times (without the back-and-forth email communication for updates).
Client Dashboard: Talking about email communication, wouldn't it be best to save time on that and let your client see the tasks you are working on with its updates? With PM tools, all you need to manage clients are simple dashboards.
Client Onboarding: One of the other places where time could be saved in client communications is the long video calls. With the PM tool, you can create questionnaires and send them to your client to fill in. What’s more, is that you can even templatise these questionnaires.
Time Tracking: One of the drawbacks of the service industry is that your time is your cost and not a lot of people know how to calculate that cost. Task time tracking enables you to do just that so you can calculate cost-to-client accurately for the whole project.
Tasks Management: Lastly, manage multiple projects. When you know what you are supposed to do every day, you do not feel overwhelmed and straightaway get to the job which needs to be done. Kind of like how we had school timetables to tell us what we were expected to study in each period.
Conclusion
Being a freelancer does not mean you cannot be disciplined and organised. By following these easy tips you can restore order to your workday and manage time more effectively.
From organising up your digital space to utilising the power of project management tools for client management, each suggestion is a step towards enabling a more balanced and productive freelance journey.
So no more feeling overwhelmed and running around the clock now when you can get easily organised and productive.
Happy freelancing!
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Hi! I am Trashika Rawat and I am an organising fanatic! It is that one topic I can go on and on about.
To give you an idea, during my childhood, I was that kid who used to go for summer vacations at my cousin’s house and organise their toys.
While I was growing up, while everyone’s mum used to organise their kid’s cupboard, I used to organise mine by myself and also tell mum to not touch it as I had my own system in place.
Makes you think of Monika from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. right? I KNOW, I am her!!!
As I grew older my obsession with organising only grew and moved towards increasing productivity.
From keeping my laptop screen empty (yes all files in their respective folders at all times) to downloading mobile apps to increase my focus time for deep work zone - I now work as a Digital Consultant taking my clients from overwhelmed to organised.
Or in simpler words, structuring various ideas in their minds till execution and building systems for their business backend so they have more time and ease.
Have any project, collaboration or idea to share?