Everyone must be productive at work, regardless of what their job is. However, the impact productivity of an individual has on their business is even more critical in the case of freelancers.
Now, here are 5 tips for freelancers who are looking for ways to increase productivity at work:
1. Track what you spend your time on
We may not value our time well enough because we are used to it slipping through our fingers without noticing it. Besides counting working hours for billing purposes, we must also track time to organise our working days better and have more leisure time as one of the benefits.
In order to track time accurately you can install a time tracker such as Toggl to measure the amount of effort you put into each task and each client.
2. Select your clients
Yes, you heard it well! You must select your clients carefully. We understand you are a freelancer and it’s hard to say no to a client that could become another source of income for you but sometimes it is necessary to look at the bigger picture.
If you believe you will not meet the deadline of a project you are already working on or the deadline of the new project is too close you must turn your potential client down. When you have an oversized workload it might be wise to say “No, thanks” to a client.
One way to evaluate whether or not undertake new projects is to calculate the time similar projects took you by using the data from past projects you have on your profile on time trackers. Your best possible frame of reference to estimate how much time you will spend in the future is to look at how much time it took you in the past.
3. Minimise potential distractions
We often get distracted in the office. We spend a long time on meetings, our ear gets caught up with other people’s conversations, we have a quick look at our favourite news site or updated on our social media profiles and more. This is healthy to a certain extent.
However, freelancers who often work from home, have a wide range of “available distractions” because nobody controls what they are doing. For many people this freedom is too much too handle. While we cannot control if you switch on your Xbox or if you go to the fridge to have a snack every 20 minutes, there is a way to limitate your distractions while you are using your computer. You can install a plugin such as LeechBlock on Firefox or StayFocusD on Chrome.
You can also set a specific time frame to allow yourself time to look at websites for personal leisure, for instance a coffee break in the morning or right after lunch to make your transition from the lunch table to your desk easier.
4. Break up your time in blocks
The human brain is like the tyres of a Formula One car. Both need to warm up in order to give the best possible performance. In the case of humans we need time to switch gears from one task to another. It is not until we have spent about 20–30 minutes of work on a particular task, until we will be performing at full effectiveness.
This means that it is better to break up your time as a freelancer in large blocks. You must focus on tasks for long periods of time instead of constantly siwtching from one to the next. Of course, you must finish pending short activities often but you must do this between longer more complex (and commonly, more important) tasks. Beware, this does not mean you must procrastinate small tasks again and again.
Organising your time properly will ease the reconciliation of family and professional life.
5. Communicate better
One of the hazards of being a freelancer is that you can work on a project on one direction for days or even weeks when the client was expecting you to go on a different direction. This can be avoided by sharing information on a timely manner with the client before you make trascendent decisions or changes. However, some professionals might find it hard to send heavy files by e-mail and some companies will not accept the use of tools such as We Transfer which generate public URLs.
Another hazard can be being in the exact opposite situation. This is when a client is constantly sending new information and changes with little to no commitment to past decisions. If this is the case soon we will found ourselves constantly checking our e-mail inbox to reply with often formal responses that take time to be written up.
Both of these cases can be avoided by the use of “e-mail killers” and all-in-one communication platforms such as Noysi, which enables you to chat with your clients and share heavy files instantly in a secure online environment.
With Noysi you can also search for files or messages on conversations that you can organise by client, project or working team, in case you regularly outsource part of your work. Save time. Communicate better.
