One of the challenges of freelancing is the need to organize all branches of your life independently. Someone else has already created no office schedule, and it has to be followed. It's easy to find time for any activity during the day, whether it's a long lunch with friends or a spontaneous tap dancing or diving lesson. You can sleep for as long as you want and go to bed when you've finished the entire season of a new Netflix show. You can also read about how to plan your day in our previous article.
And you can always reschedule projects and put them off until a special day when the mood is yee-de-a-ay. And if, for several people, all of the above are huge pluses of freelancing, then for those who intend to seriously work in the format of free-floating and be a professional - it is rather a minus.
How does a freelancer organize his working day?
A freelancer most often has a unique opportunity that people with a rationed schedule don't have: the ability to make their own personal schedule.
Step 1: determine what times you will be working
You always wanted to wake up at five in the morning and finish all your work before lunch - please! You have a hard time waking up before 11 am, and in the office before lunch, you only tried to stay awake - no more waking up too early! Maybe you dreamed of working at night in complete silence? It's possible, too! If you consider your biorhythms, periods of maximum productivity and motivation, you can understand at what time you work better. And build your schedule that will support you, not suck you dry.
One important question is: How many days off per week do you need? Once you've answered it, determine when you'll be available to clients in person. Most aspiring freelancers are on call anytime they are awake, because they are afraid of missing an important project. In the long run, this is a highly disadvantageous strategy: this is how a person burns out faster, and work and personal life become intertwined in an unravelable tangle.
This is especially true if you work from home. Remember that an adequate client who is interested in cooperating with you will understand that you will not answer him instantly on Saturday evening.
Step 2: write out what goes into your daily routine
If you pick up your laptop in the morning and plunge into work before all the hygiene procedures, then you need to add them to your schedule. Write down all the tasks you have for the day, week and even month. Don't forget about hobbies, as well as physical activity. The latter is especially important if your job involves a predominantly sedentary lifestyle. Next - put all the tasks you have written out into your schedule, taking into account its workload for each day of the week. If you find this difficult, ... you're not the only one. That's why Voiset is here to help you, but more on that later.
Step 3: decide how many projects per day you are willing to take on
Are you ready to take on only large tasks or can you easily switch between small tasks and do even 10 of them per day? Ease of switching is one of the most personal and important parameters for a freelancer. Think about it and calculate the time it takes you to switch from one project to another. This time should also be factored into your rate. In other words, if a small task will take you only 30 minutes to complete, but after it you need another 1.5 hours to restart, it means that the total time to work on the designated task is 2 hours.
How many hours a day should a freelancer work?
This is actually step four, but we'll focus on it in more detail. How would you answer this question? A lot of people don't think there's any difference between freelance work and a full-time schedule, because it's easy to call seven or eight hours 5 days a week. Is that a lot for you or not enough?
There are a few pitfalls to think about.
1. Your working hours include interaction with clients. All calls, messenger messages, conferences, group chats on projects, etc., are what you spend your time on. - that is where your time is spent;
2. Your work time includes everything you do to promote yourself and generate the necessary paperwork to run your business. This includes filing ads, responding to project requests, updating your portfolio, generating checks, paying taxes, etc.
3. Your work time also includes the time it takes to switch between projects, make edits, etc. This can include calls with clients, analyzing new tasks and edits, just taking breaks and relaxing.
If you have already started freelancing, you can roughly estimate how many hours per week you actually spend on your work. Very often the time indicated in the previous three points is even more than the time that a freelancer allocates to work tasks. If this is the case, its optimization and strict time management is necessary.
Interestingly, according to a number of studies, it turned out that often a person performs work exactly for the time that he or she allocated for it (or was allocated for it).
In other words, if an office worker has 8 hours to send 40 e-mails, he'll get it done. If you give him only 4 hours for the same task, motivated by the possibility of going home early, he will do it in 4 hours. Therefore, a productivity tip: set yourself specific deadlines in each day, then time management will allow you to increase your productivity and reduce the total working time.
How do freelancers make their own schedule?
If you've already determined a comfortable start and end time, written out your daily routine, and generated a list of all work and personal tasks, the question arises: what's next?
And now you need to sign up for Voiset, because it will help you further, even make your schedule for you.
How do I use Voiset in my daily life?
1. Dictate to Voiset all the tasks you have.
It will hear you and translate your speech into text. If you are not comfortable with voice input, enter the tasks in the text;
2. Prioritize each task.
The most important, time-burning tasks should have the highest priority. In Voiset, you can easily view each task and assign it a specific importance by color-coding it accordingly;
3. Organize your schedule around the personalities you identified earlier.
You know what time you want to wake up and what time you want to start your work day. You know how many hours a day you plan to work, etc. Make sure your schedule reflects your ideal schedule for your life - both personal and work;
4. Add new tasks to Voiset.
It will distribute them daily based on your workload, deadline, and task prioritization.
Voiset is powered by artificial intelligence, which optimizes your schedule without subjectivity.
We all have urgent matters that we don't like for one reason or another. For example, you may receive revisions to a project that are expressed in an incorrect form, and even from a client with whom you do not want to work in the future.
Of course, you do not want to take on the rework, even if it is necessary. That's why we often make up that there are higher-priority tasks, up to a visit to grandma, just to postpone the unpleasant imminent.
But Voiset easily understands the situation and puts this important task on your to-do list for the next free day. If you do it, you'll immediately feel lighter. So, the productivity tips can be summarized as follows: let Voiset make the right decisions for you. You can install the app on Android or IOS.
