Tips for Organizing Your Freelance Work
The Importance of Routine for Freelancers
As summer winds down and kids head back to school, many freelancers find themselves needing to get back into a routine. In some ways, this is the best time to refresh your routines. After all, who doesn’t love a fresh page in the calendar and a refresh of “school supplies”? Establishing a solid routine is crucial for productivity and success. A well-structured routine not only boosts efficiency but also helps in maintaining a healthy work-life balance, reducing stress, and fostering a sense of accomplishment.
Assessing Your Current Workflow
When assessing your workflow, make sure you’re asking specific questions, and being honest in your answers. Some questions to consider include:
Have I made time to actively work on my goals outside of completing client work? If your routine only makes time for client work, it’s important to schedule time to work on your business. This includes updating your website, marketing, administrative tasks, and career development.
What you can do: Start by allocating 30 minutes each day to work on your business goals. As you get accustomed to this routine, you can gradually increase the time.
Is anything taking longer than it should? Sometimes a task I scheduled for 90 minutes ends up taking much longer, disrupting my work and causing stress. If you find tasks consistently taking longer than expected, assess whether it’s due to misjudging time or underlying issues causing delays.
What you can do: Use a time-tracking tool to record how long each task takes. Analyze the data to identify tasks that consistently take longer than expected. Adjust your schedule to better accommodate these tasks or address any underlying issues causing the delays. I use a very simple spreadsheet to do this, email me if you’d like the template or think I should add it to my resources section!
Are there shortcuts or automations I could implement that would allow me to focus on deeper work and my goals? Look for tools or processes that can automate repetitive tasks. For example, I used to create a new blog graphic every time I wrote a post, which was time-consuming and daunting.” By creating a template, I eliminated this hassle and now approach blogging with ease.
What you can do: Identify repetitive tasks in your workflow that could be automated or streamlined. Explore tools and services that offer automation options, such as scheduling tools for social media or template generators for graphics. Implement one new tool or process and evaluate how it impacts your efficiency. Keep up with my blog, these are exactly the types of tips I share with easy-to-follow videos and text and screenshot instructions!
Create a Simple Daily Routine
Start by outlining your basic daily routine. This could include dedicated work hours, breaks, and time for personal tasks. Prioritize your most important tasks. You can have all the productivity tools in the world but a routine is really at the foundation of organizing your freelance work.
When starting, don’t get too ambitious. It can be overwhelming to plan to work for 8 full hours a day while also fitting in client work, workouts, managing a household, personal errands, and everything else. The most important thing in the beginning is prioritizing the work that gets you paid (you’re building a business, after all) and getting new leads. It’s okay to start with a routine that just focuses on these two things!
Once you're in a good routine and gain a few more clients, you can get more specific with your routine. Email me if you’d like to see a blog about how to build a killer routine you’ll follow in the future!
Organize Your Freelance Workspace for Success
While I would love to be naturally organized, I’ve realized that organization is something I need to actively manage. If it’s not on my checklist, it’s not getting done—especially when it comes to organizing, which doesn’t come naturally to me.
To stay focused and productive, I keep both my physical and digital workspaces as streamlined as possible. For me, less is definitely more. Whether it’s due to my Piscean tendencies or just being a reformed hot mess, I know clutter is a problem for me, so I make a conscious effort to avoid it.
My desk is equipped with just the essentials: a cup of writing utensils, a "jotting down" notebook, my laptop, a Google speaker (essential for my music), and post-its. I also keep a small piece of eyeglasses decor (a nod to my love for glasses), a lamp, and a small enamel plate with sea glass, crystals, and palo santo. That’s it!
For my digital workspace, I rely on Google Workspace and organize everything into nested folders. I sort documents by year, with each client having a dedicated folder. This consistent method ensures that both I and my clients can easily find what we need at any time. Sticking to this simple, utilitarian system helps me stay focused and efficient.
Habit Stacking: Building Better Routines Over Time
Habit stacking is a powerful technique for building routines and developing new habits. It’s a big part of why I’ve been successful. The idea is simple: attach a new habit you want to develop to an existing habit you already do automatically.
The key is to ensure the two habits occur around the same time each day. I still remember the first habit I stacked on my freelancing journey. It was so simple that it encouraged me to stack additional habits. For example, I love my morning coffee, but I wanted to drink more water. So, I decided to make this change: while letting my coffee cool down (I prefer it warm but not scalding), I’d get a glass of ice water with a splash of lemon juice. Now, I usually drink about 32 ounces of water before my first sip of coffee.
It’s not groundbreaking, but this small change—and the victory of sticking to it—made it easier for me to add other habits to my routine. Thanks to this simple exercise, I’ve built a solid morning and evening routine.
Balancing Work and Family: Setting Boundaries
One of the biggest challenges freelancers face is setting and enforcing boundaries.
I’m not a therapist or social worker, so I won’t delve into attachment styles, people-pleasing tendencies, or the eldest daughter phenomenon. However, with over a decade of freelancing experience, I’ve learned a lot about boundaries—both from my own experiences and from those of my freelance and business-owner friends.
The biggest issue with freelance boundaries, in my experience, is a lack of communication and understanding. A boundary isn’t just a statement; it’s a practice. You have to adhere to it consistently and use the right language to communicate it effectively.
When I started freelancing, I didn’t have much work. It was easy for me to take care of all the tasks that had accumulated while my husband and I were both traditionally employed.
Suddenly…
I could grocery shop in the middle of the afternoon.
I could walk the dogs separately.
Dinner was incredible every night.
There was never laundry in the hamper!
I framed this as “having time” to do these things. I told myself, “I have time to take the dog to the vet,” “I have time to do the grocery shopping,” and “I have time to organize the coat closet.”
But the reality is, I didn’t have more time than before—there have always been and always will be 24 hours in a day.
I quickly learned the hard way that focusing solely on client work wasn’t growing my business. When I restructured my approach, I made sure Kris and I discussed it. I said, “I’m going to start dedicating time to finding new clients. I’ve only been focusing on client work, but I want to expand my business.” Of course, he was supportive!
I also had a conversation with myself: “I’m prioritizing the next two hours for my marketing plan over cooking an elaborate dinner because I want to attract more clients.”
Sometimes the person we most need to set and enforce boundaries with is ourselves.
Maintaining Momentum: Tips for Staying Consistent
Consistency is key to making your new routine stick. Track your progress, celebrate small wins, and don’t be afraid to adjust your routine as needed. Remember, building new habits takes time, so be patient with yourself.
One practice I’ve come to love is tracking. I need to see what I’m accomplishing to stay motivated. Tracking isn’t just about assessing if I can handle things; it’s also about recognizing improvements and challenging myself to do more.
For instance, when I wanted to blog more, I started tracking how many posts I wrote since January without setting specific goals. Initially, the number was small, but that’s okay. The next step was to determine the average number of posts per month and set a goal to write one more post than that in the following month. This simple review and goal-setting practice helped me blog more consistently.
In a few weeks, I’ll share how I’ve surpassed my previous blogging stats. For now, try applying this practice to a task you do but wish you did more, especially if you don’t have a specific goal for it.
Here’s how to get started:
Identify a Task: Choose a task you do but wish you did more. It’s helpful if it’s not something you have an active goal for.
Review Your Activity: Look back at how many times you’ve completed this task since the start of the year.
Calculate Your Average: Determine how many times you average doing this task per month. For example, if you’ve written 12 blogs since January and it’s August, divide 12 by 8 (the number of months), which equals 1.5 blogs per month.
Set a New Goal: Aim to increase that number in the next month. For example, set a goal to write 2.5 blogs next month (which could be 2 full blogs plus one outline or set of notes). Focus on achieving this for just one month. If successful, try to maintain or build on it for the next month.
Review and Adjust: Once you’ve consistently achieved your goal for three months, reassess and adjust as needed to continue improving.
Conclusion: Embrace the Transition
While it might still feel like summer, starting to establish a routine now will set you up well before the winter holidays are upon us and things are hectic.
Remember to build in time for yourself, as it’s easy to overlook self-care amidst a busy schedule.
Be sure to check back next week for a blog introducing SEO—an essential tool for all freelancers! Or sign up for my newsletter to get it right in your inbox!
