46 Must-Read Productivity Tips for Freelancers

Leo Babauta |
General
| August 3rd 2007

Freelancers face a unique set of productivity challenges, often very different from the challenges faced by regular employees.

As such, it’s time we looked at the best productivity tips for us freelancers.

Of course, some of us are both employees and freelancers, so we need to learn to deal with the challenges of both worlds. I’ve scoured some of the best productivity sites (and some that aren’t productivity sites) and came up with a list of some of the must-read tips from those sites that apply to the challenges of freelancers.

Not all of these tips will apply to you — pick and choose those that will work in your situation.

Focus on value creation. From Steve Pavlina: “It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the purpose of a business is to make money. But the real purpose of a business is to create value. While it’s possible to make money in the short run without creating much value, in the long run it’s unsustainable.”
Learn to beat daily stress. From Dumb Little Man: “Simply put, there is no remedy to stress. There are however things we can do to lower the level a bit.”
Create a personal stability plan. From Wisebread: “Taking the time to sit down and write out the areas of our lives that are unstable, brainstorm ideas to provide more stability … and make a firm commitment to act on them, accompanied by a concrete schedule. For those of us who really want more stability in our lives, it just may be a great way to take the first step towards a more stable, actualized life.”
Build your business before quitting your job. From Lifehack.org: “There should be much more consideration to making a decision to quit your job than simply “look before you leap.” There are ways to approach this without burning bridges, while building wealth and increasing the likelihood of success in the new venture.”
Use free or cheap productivity tools. From Lifehacker: “Getting organized, focused and productive doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.”
Take time to develop relationships. From The Simple Dollar: “When you have a chance to connect one friend to another, make it happen. It might take you some time and effort – it might even make you grumble a bit. But when things happen in your own life, you will be met with an abundance of blessings.”
Decide whether you’re ready to start your own business. From Wisebread: “Let’s face it: most of us have ideas that we think might sell. And most of us think we’d love to work for ourselves. But is that really a good idea? Here are 10 things to consider if you’re thinking of starting your own business.”
Simplify your online life. From Web Worker Daily:“If we focus on simplifying our online lives, we can drastically reduce the amount of time we spend online, the amount of time we spend working, the amount of information we have to consume, and the amount of stuff we have to keep track of.”
Create a personal mantra. From Guy Kawasaki:“A mantra is three or four words long. Tops. Its purpose is to help employees truly understand why the organization exists.”
List 3-5 things you will do the next day. From pmarca.com: “Once you get into the habit, you start to realize how many days you used to have when you wouldn’t get 3 to 5 important/significant/meaningful things done during a day.”
Create a chain of success. From Lifehacker: “Daily action builds habits. It gives you practice and will make you an expert in a short time. If you don’t break the chain, you’ll start to spot opportunities you otherwise wouldn’t.”
Get your inbox to zero. From 43 Folders: “The truth is that you probably can take the average email inbox — even a relatively neglected one — from full to zero in about 20 minutes. It mostly depends on how much you really want to be done with it.”
Eliminate all but the essential tasks. From Zen Habits: “Simplify your list down to the barest of essentials, and you can eliminate the need for complex planning systems.”
Learn the Power of Yes. From Get Rich Slowly: “That became my working motto: “Just say yes”. Any time anyone asked me to do something, I agreed to do it … But the power of “yes” has made larger changes to my life, too, has exposed me to things I never would have done before.”
Make your to-do list doable. From Lifehacker: “Think of your to-do list as an instruction set your Boss self gives your Assistant self. Like a computer program, if the instructions are clear, specific, and easily executed, you’re golden. If not, you’ll get undesirable results, like fear, procrastination and self-loathing.”
Remove clutter from your life. From Dumb Little Man: “Devote a little of your time to tossing clutter from your life, and keeping things relatively clutter-free, and you’ll be rewarded with much more pleasing living spaces, with a less stressful life, and with better organization and productivity.”
Learn to check email just twice a day. From Timothy Ferriss: “E-mail (and all of its Crackberry/digital leash/Twitter cousins) is the largest single interruption in modern life. In a digital world, creating time therefore hinges on minimizing e-mail.”
Simplify your time management. From LifeDev: “This system allows you to focus on what’s important, to limit your workload to something a bit more sane, and to increase your effectiveness by focusing less on the busy work and more on the high-powered tasks.”
Beat procrastination with a dash. From 43 Folders: “My favorite tonic for procrastination—which I have mentioned in passing previously—is what I call a dash, which is simply a short burst of focused activity during which you force yourself to do nothing but work on the procrastinated item for a very short period of time—perhaps as little as just one minute.”
Learn to single-task. From Zen Habits: “Multi-tasking is less efficient, due to the need to switch gears for each new task, and the switch back again. Multi-tasking is more complicated, and thus more prone to stress and errors.”
Find your ideal career. From Pick the Brain: “Your ideal career is something that can’t be forced — it needs to be discovered. Just let things happen. Try to capture your thoughts, but not to control them.”
Learn to say no. From Cranking Widgets: “Your goal is to be effective at your work, not stretched so thin that you’re under a constant time crunch. Can you do what’s being asked of you and do it properly? If not, it’s time to practice saying no.”
Use easy time tracking. From Wisebread:“Whether it’s tracking freelance hours worked or time spent on your own projects, keeping track of how long you’ve been working is important. My solution for keeping the hours from slipping away is simple: An old fashioned kitchen timer.”
Learn razor-sharp concentration. From Lifehack.org:“Even a half hour of focused effort can get more done than an entire day of distraction and multitasking.”
Learn to tackle the dreaded task. From The Happiness Project: “We all have to make ourselves do things that we just don’t want to do. Here are some tricks I’ve learned that help me power through the procrastination.”
Surround yourself with productivity. From Behance:“Why throw away the relics of your achievements when you can create an inspiring monument to getting stuff done? A “Done! Wall” reminds you that you have moved forward in your journey.”
Maximize your creative output. From Steve Pavlina: “For me the creative flow state is a common occurrence. I usually enter this state several times a week, staying with it for hours at a time. I’m able to routinely enjoy the flow state as long as I ensure the right conditions.”
Plan your week by identifying your Big Rocks. From Zen Habits: “These Big Rocks get pushed back from week to week because we never have time to do them — our days fill up too quickly, and before we know it, weeks have passed and the Big Rocks are still sitting on the side, untouched. Plan your week ahead of time, placing your Big Rocks first.”
Learn to use the 80/20 rule. From Scott Young: “While Pareto originally used the rule noticing that 80% of the wealth was owned by 20% of the population, the rule has applications in almost every area of life.”
Motivate yourself through the action phase. From Steve Pavlina: “When I set a goal that’s big enough and challenging enough, I never need to pump myself up with emotional rah-rah. I feel motivated to pursue the goal because my intellect is fully behind it. I just find myself doing what needs to be done.”
Take control of your life with GTD. From Get Rich Slowly: “Taking control of your finances is easier when the rest of your life is in order. If your mind is swamped with worries about work, or home improvement projects, or obligations to friends and family, personal finance can become a low priority. You have other Stuff to worry about.”
Take 5 simple steps to stop procrastination. From Dumb Little Man: “five simple habits will eliminate the plague of procrastination. Take them today, and you should see a huge difference in your productivity.”
Cultivate the Now Habit. From Scott Young: “Cultivating a habit to focus on what is, not what might be or what was, is a happy way to live. Relationships can end, status can fail and religion can delude, but the now is a constant.”
Create a central project list. From Lifehack.org:“I find that if I give the first 30 minutes of my morning towards wiping out my inbox and either turning the mail into projects or acting immediately, it goes a long way on improving my day.”
Deal with social network overload. From Web Worker Daily:“The social computing world is messy and overloaded, and that’s what’s likely to happen to you if you try to keep up with every social network/app you create an account on.”
Master the 5-sentence email. From Guy Kawasaki: “The optimal length of an email message is five sentences. All you should do is explain who you are, what you want, why you should get it, and when you need it by.”
Learn to kill distractions. From LifeClever: “Reducing and eliminating pesky distractions isn’t a feat, and you don’t need a 12-step program.”
Learn to manage your personal stack. From Web Worker Daily: “For the web worker, working hard is no longer enough. These days, genius is one percent attention and ninety-nine percent stack management.”
Separate your to-dos from your email. From Lifehacker: “Let’s face it: email is not a task manager. One of the biggest leaps I made towards keeping on top of all my pending to-do’s was making a clean, mindful break between email and tasks.”
Trick yourself into action. From David Seah: “I think there IS something to using the body to kick-start the mind into doing things, especially when it’s lazy.”
Cut out time wasters. From Scott Young: “The best way to figure out the value of a task is to ask yourself, “What happens if I stop?” Breathing, eating and sleeping would then be in the top ten for valuable activities. Just because an activity is routine doesn’t mean it is less valuable.”
Tap into the power of 10 minutes. From LifeDev:“While it may seem like an insignificant amount of time, 10 minutes can be very useful in productivity. Although there aren’t many projects that can get done in 10 minutes, you sure can get one started.”
Organized your cluttered computer desktop. From LifeClever: “Your desktop should now be clutter-free, saving you from the visual onslaught of icons and preserving your sanity. Because each icon on the desktop takes up some bit of RAM, you might also notice your computer running faster.”
Use a “Today list”. From Black Belt Productivity: “It pays to have a short list of stuff you have need to do today. It can be taken from your project and NA listing and put in a specific place as a reminder or a checklist.”
Use a “Habit list”. From Productivity 501: “This tool was created with the premise that “habit” type tasks should not be on our regular todo list. There are several reasons that keeping these types of items on your regular todo list is a bad idea.”
Take micro-naps. From Steven Aitchison: “You may have already experienced a micronap without realising it. It’s those moments when you doze off for a few moments, 2-5 minutes, and wake up with a start.”

Tags: Productivity

Leo Babauta |
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Leo Babauta has been a reporter, editor, speech writer and freelance writer for the last 17 years. Leo writes for numerous blogs notably including LifeHack.org and his own blog about simple productivity, Zen Habits.net.

46 Must-Read Productivity Tips for Freelancers

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