As a freelance writer, you are a self-employed professional who needs to excel at organization for optimal success. There are many different aspects to organization, including organizing your schedule, organizing your work area, and project management. Each of these areas is equally important for your success as a freelance writer. This article is the first in a three part series that explores organizational tips in these three areas, and this article provides tips that will help you to better organize your schedule.
Many freelance writers are creative, right-brained types rather than analytical, left-brained people, and so few take the time to sit down and plan out their day, much less their week. However, the fact is that when you take the time to plan out your schedule, you can structure your workload in a way that improves efficiency and that even promotes creativity.
Planning Assignments. Many people find they have a certain point in the day when they are most creative. For some, this may be in the early morning hours while for others it may be the afternoon or even the evening. Each assignment or writing project you work on will require various degrees of creativity. Beyond creativity, some projects are just easier for you to do than others. When you sit down to plan out your day or your week, plan to work on your more difficult projects or your projects that require more creativity at peak times of your day. Save the easier projects to work on when you typically operate on fewer cylinders. This strategy will help you to maximize efficiency based on your own internal cycles.
Assignment Due Dates. Some projects you work on has its own unique due dates, while others may be open-ended and allow you to work as much or as little as you have time to. When you sit down to create your daily and weekly schedule, be sure to keep due dates in mind. You will want to work on each project enough on a regular basis to ensure that you can meet the due dates of all of your projects. When you get really busy trying to meet the demands of upcoming due dates, it’s easy to put projects that don’t have a due date to the back-burner. However, while these projects may not have a due date, the client likely wants you to work on the project on a regular basis, so keep this in mind as well.
Look For Holes in Your Schedule. When you are planning out your schedule on a regular basis, looking a week or even farther into the future, you will have a much clearer picture of when your work load is likely to decrease. This gives you plenty of time to find additional projects to work on. So by taking the time to organize and plan your daily and weekly schedule, you will be able to maintain a certain workload and therefore a certain income level.
When you are really busy with deadlines approaching and more work than you can handle, it seems like planning a schedule is the least of your concerns. However, organizing your day and even your week helps you ensure that deadlines are met, that your work is completed most efficiently, and that you stay busy on a regular basis. In the second part of this three part article series, we will explore strategies for organizing your work area.
