How to manage your time as a Freelance Writer?
I have been a freelance writer, technical and non-technical coming up to a year now. In that time, my LinkedIn network has expanded and I frequently get asked ‘How do you manage to freelance and work?’.
It was not easy and I had to test the waters and figure out what worked for me and what didn’t. Some may say that having freelance or part-time jobs, whilst managing your full-time job is impossible. But people are doing it, so how it is impossible?
In this article, I will explain the steps that you need to take to efficiently have a good working life, whilst maintaining your side hustle and personal life.
What is your why?
Before we decide on anything in life, we normally have a ‘why’. Questions can be Why do I do this? Why do I value this over that? Why am I not happy when X happens? The answers to this can differ from success to leaving a legacy behind, having a positive impact on the lives of others, and more.
As a writer, you need to understand your ‘why’ when wanting to pursue a freelancing writing career. Reasons could be:
- I enjoy writing and I love my current career, let me blend the two
- I want to earn extra money
- I want to build my theory-based knowledge
I would always recommend to people: do what you like. Once you start doing things that drain you and have no benefit to you, it starts to become a detriment to your progress and overall success.
Being able to determine your why before you do anything in life will give you better directions in succeeding in your short-term and long-term goals.
Mindset
“Mind is a flexible mirror, adjust it, to see a better world.”
- Amit Ray
Something motivated you to decide to make a change, and when you make that change in your life, you have chosen to commit. Motivation is a feeling, commitment is a mindset.
If you want to succeed as a Freelance Writer, you need to be fully committed and reflect on your motivation.
Did you decide to become a Freelance Writer because you wanted the extra income? If so, you need to ensure that your articles are sufficient and of a good standard as your end goal is to receive a source of income from it?
Maybe you decided to become a Freelance Writer because you wanted to share your knowledge? Your motivation could be to simplify complex technical subjects. Your commitment is to make sure that the articles you produce can be understood by somebody that doesn’t have any knowledge of your sector.
How about becoming a Freelance Writer because you wanted to expand your current knowledge? If so, your motivation is to learn something new, and your commitment is to research and learn that topic to produce an article you can be proud of.
Your mindset relates to your why. If you don’t understand your ‘why’, you don’t know what motivates you and then you cannot commit to it.
Priorities
When managing your Freelance Writing jobs with your full-time work, you need to make priorities. It can be overwhelming trying to juggle both, but you need to differentiate the priority levels for both.
Your full-time job may consist of you being committed from 9 am-5 pm, whereas your Freelance Writing job may only require you to write an article once or twice a week. Making sure that you prioritise your full-time work tasks during your work hours, giving your 100% is important.
Your company may or may not know that you are committed to another company out of work hours. If they don’t but they can see that you are tired and are less motivated at work because you have been committing yourself to your freelance work; it could put you at risk of losing your job.
You need to understand how much workload you can manage; everybody is different so there is no default human setting for this. You need to understand yourself, your skills, and reflect on your ‘why’.
Differentiating between what is your bread and butter and what is extra income is a good aspect of Freelancing. For some, who are self-employed, Freelance work is their bread and butter; that is why they prioritise it during their week to make sure tasks are completed.
If you have a full-time job and feel too exhausted by the end of your day to complete your Freelancing work; you may need to consider taking a break from Freelance writing or adjusting your mindset.
An important element that can help you overcome this is organising yourself.
Organise yourself
Managing a full-time job and Freelance work or a pure Freelance career can be difficult to manage. But organisation is your best friend.
Everybody is different. Some store everything in their brain and tick them off as they do it; some need to physically write it down and tick them off in a different color pen. You need to figure out what works for you but there is also no harm in trying new strategies.
Below I will go through some points that can help you manage and organise yourself.
Goals
This relates to your ‘why’. Setting yourself short-term and long-term goals will help you have a clearer vision of what you need to do.
Your short-term goals can be as short as what you plan to accomplish in the week, whereas your long-term goals could be things you want to achieve in 3–6 months or a year. Your long-term goal can only be achieved if you complete your short-term goals.
This requires a lot of thinking time, but once you have understood your goals, you will start to see what paths you need to go down and how things automatically fall into place.
Write things down
This could be using a notebook, diary, or a whiteboard. This is based primarily on what works best for you. Some people may need to have their tasks in front of them at all times, so using a whiteboard may be their best bet. Whereas some people may need to take their tasks with them everywhere they go; so having something small like a notebook or diary that they can leave in their bag is more convenient for them.
Review your weekly activities; this will help you understand what has been completed and what still needs to be tackled.
Manage your time
Scheduling your tasks throughout the day and week gives you more control of your time.
One way to manage your time and your tasks is understanding the level of complexity of your tasks. For example, as a Freelance Writer, you may have a request to write an article of 3000 works about Natural Language Processing (NLP), with code and examples. This may require a lot of time and focus, so delegating this task during a time you have the most energy and concentration will benefit you.
This gives you time to handle less complex tasks for other times during your week. For example, articles that are more theory-based or for educational/career advice require less heavy focus and concentration.
Conclusion
When deciding to take on Freelance Writing work whilst juggling a full-time job or deciding to become a self-employed Freelance writer; you need to consider all the above elements if you wish to succeed.
- Think about your ‘why’
- Alter your mindset to achieve your ‘why’
- Prioritise your tasks
- Organise yourself to achieve these tasks
