Tips for Wearing Multiple Hats
One of the realities of being a freelancer is that you will have a wide variety of responsibilities in regards to running a successful business. You won’t have the luxury of passing duties off to another department, and your success depends on your ability to wear multiple hats and develop some versatility. The dizzying amount of responsibilities can be overwhelming at times, but it can also be one of the perks to being a freelancer. You’ll have the opportunity to try your hand at every aspect of business, and you won’t get bored from doing the same repetitive tasks over and over again. Whether you see this diversity as a positive or a negative of freelancing, you can increase your productivity by realizing all of your responsibilities and setting a plan for success.
Distinguish Your Separate Responsibilities
The first step is to simply acknowledge the different aspects of business that you will need to manage. Of course this will include income-producing work (designing, developing, writing, or whatever else it is that you offer), tracking expenses, managing invoices, balancing bank accounts, marketing your services, continual learning and development, customer service, and more.
Embrace the Diversity of Your Job
Like it or not, we all have a lot on our plates. In my opinion it’s best just to embrace the fact that we need to be knowledgeable in multiple aspects of business rather than fighting it and trying to convince ourselves that we really don’t have to be good with finances, or some other aspect of the business. When we embrace our responsibilities we’re ready to move on towards finding solutions that will help us to be more efficient.
Schedule Time as Needed
If there’s a particular aspect of the business that we don’t enjoy or that we struggle with, it’s natural to keeping putting that work off into the future. The problem is that with a busy schedule time moves too quickly and these things tend to not get done until it’s too late and things have been made more difficult than necessary.
Part of my routine is to make daily and weekly to-do lists and to schedule out my time. I try to give myself some flexibility, but by setting aside time for necessary tasks I can make sure that I get the “dirty work” done before it’s piled up and created a real problem.
If you find yourself struggling to get everything done and getting behind on the same aspects of business all the time, make an effort to schedule some time each week (or as often as necessary) to make sure that you have adequate time.
Establish Goals for Each Aspect of Your Business
I think it’s safe to say that we all hope to achieve success in freelancing, and effective goal setting is one of the foundations to success in any business. For a freelancer, goals should include a variety of different aspects of the business.
For example, your primary goals may involve how much money you want to make or which projects you want to finish by the end of the month - but don’t forget about the other parts of freelancing. Maybe you should have a goal for contacting one former client each week/month to see if there is any way you can be of service to them. Or maybe you should have a goal for getting all of your expenses recorded by the end of the week. I’ve found that setting simple, small goals like this (and writing them down) can have a huge impact on getting things done and staying ahead of the game.
Give Yourself a Brief Monthly Review
What good is goal setting without following up on them? At the end of each month take a few moments to read through the goals that you had established and see which ones you met and where you fell short. This is a good step for evaluating your efficiency and for helping you to identify any weak areas in your freelance efforts. Of course, this is also helpful for leading in to your development of new goals for the following month.
Provide Yourself with the Necessary Tools
There are an incredible number of resources and tools that can help with all kinds of aspects of freelancing (see 101 Essential Freelancing Resources). An efficient freelancer will take advantage of what is available. Obviously, some tools are free and some are not. There’s such an aversion to paid tools and resources that it can become counter-productive at times. In many cases there may be a resource that costs a few dollars per month that can save a considerable amount of time and effort. While it may not be free, if you can give you more time to focus on the other aspects of your business, it may be extremely helpful to your bottom line. Invoicing tools are a prime example. Take the time to get to know the resources that are available that can help you in your day-to-day work, and see what may be cost-effective.
Recognize Your Strengths and Weakness
Although I feel it’s important to embrace the diversity of freelancing, it’s also inevitable that we will have areas of strength and areas of weakness. Recognizing these areas can help you to identify where you need to be more disciplined and where you may need some further development, or potentially some assistance from a helpful resource. For the areas that you are particularly strong in, try to find ways to maximize them in your business. If your skills involve marketing, devote some time to working on a detailed marketing plan that can help you to stand out from the competition and take your business to the next level.
Outsource Where Needed
Once you’ve identified your areas of weakness you may see some tasks that are simply better off to be outsourced. If it’s something you struggle with and you hate doing, you may be able to save yourself some headaches and free up more of your time for doing the things that you do best and for doing the things that bring in the income. (See How to Earn More and Play More: Getting Started with Personal Outsourcing.) Although you may be outsourcing the work, it’s still in your best interest to maintain some knowledge in the area and look after the work that is being done.
Don’t Loose Sight of Billable Hours
With all the responsibilities of freelancing and many of the points that we’ve looked at so far, you may find yourself getting distracted and having less and less time for client work that actually brings in the money. Whether you charge by the hour or by the project, keeping enough time for income-generating work is critical. Don’t get lost in the shuffle of doing everything right and forget about what keeps you in business. The goal is to find a balance and to develop efficiency that will minimize wasted time by taking care of all the aspects of freelancing in an organized manner.
Prioritize
With so much going on, for freelancers there is rarely enough time in the day, or enough days in the week. Effective prioritizing is an essential skill that must be developed. You simply won’t have time to get done everything that is worthy or your attention. Setting goals and scheduling your time are two big aspects or prioritizing that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Develop a Process
If you’re new to freelancing make an effort to develop habits that will help you to improve efficiency with your various responsibilities. Maybe you want to get in the habit of managing your finances and sending out invoices at the end of each week. Maybe you want to get in the habit of taking 10 minutes at the end of your work day to plan out the next day. Everyone works differently, but I think we can all benefit by developing a process that works well for us. With time this will improve efficiency and cut down on unproductive time.
What are Your Tips?
How do you cope with the need of wearing multiple hats? Please share your secrets with us.
Thanks for the advice! It really is difficult learning how and when to switch hats.
Thanks for excellent tips! When You put it like that – there is something to think about. But I really think that many of freelancers choose this profession because of those responsibilities – You can never say that Your work is routine in this job!
Although yeah, it’s hard to separate Your work from other activities.
I would say that most important is probably to set goals in each area, measurable goals! and make some review every month. This is best way to make progress.
Another thing is You need to accept diversity in our tasks as freelancers. But. Not every part of our business need to be done by us. So we can outsource, however I would suggest to try work on this topic before outsourcing (accounting may be an exception, since it is well defined and standard service to purchase). This way You gain more knowledge, and You are often have to move outside of Your comfort zone.
Keeping Yourself on edge of comfort zone IMO helps to develop new business, since You are exposed to new ideas, problems to solve etc.
It seems easy to say ‘stay outside of comfort zone’ but it can be hard sometimes push Yourself to make new activities, they seems soooo hard, difficult and scary
(externals of comfort zone are such, isn’t it? 
) ). I try to use 30-day trial idea to push myself further and maybe this will be useful idea for others (not only freelancers). I set up blog where I document my trials and ups and downs with progress. Please visit http://30-day-trial.com/ and help me keeping pressure on me 
brilliant post – i really enjoyed it – thanks
This is solid advice. I especially agree with embracing diversity; you have to be involved in every step as a freelancer, or contract the work out to others. Managing your finances can’t just go undone.
I blogged about the dangers of scheduling in The Irrationality of Apportionment; what often happens is that the moment you’re struck with inspiration for that great article, you realize your schedule says you have to balance your checkbook. Then you do that, come back to your article an hour later, and there’s no spark left.
SO, I recommend you keep your schedule flexible. Rigid schedules are only good if you’re not good at managing your time to start, but you can transition to a flexible schedule as you become more self-motivated. Then, leave a lot of time open by not scheduling anything close to the deadline, but instead way before it’s due. That way, you can get “side-tracked” by inspiration without worrying about the schedule.
Dainis,
I agree. I think this aspect of the profession appeals to a lot of freelancers.
Thanks for this list. I especially like the tips on time management. Can’t think of anything to add — this is a really comprehensive post.
Another tip, close the email client. Schedule a few times throughout the day to go through your inbox and assign yourself tasks for the important items. Otherwise, you’ll be pulled in every different direction every few minutes.
acceptance of circumstance is also a key.
having realized that not everyone (clients) might appreciate that which was offered in my turn-key package, i decided to don a new title. so, instead of -Design, or -Director, or -Owner, or -Developer, or -Managing Partner, or -Illustrator, i decided to settle it all with simply “Copious Fedorist”
I break much ice with this, as might be imagined.
thanks for your great article/post/summation. and remember, embrace the battle, you can always buy a bigger rack. Hat that is.
Thanks for a great article. I’ve given my self the title of Grand Pubah.
Thanks for the article!
The part that really rang true with me was developing a process.
I would go even further and say “Document your process”.
Why?
Because this the first step in “systematising” your business (is systematising a real word???), which means:
1. You can delegate tasks to someone else … e.g. you may have a spouse who doesn’t share the same skills as you but wants to help out
2. Your business can one day run without you (it becomes a system), freeing you up to own the business and focus on higher-value activities such as growing it.
I at least start everyday with a list of things I want to accomplish that day / week.
I’ll then alot certain hrs in the day for those things to get accomplished (with a bit of wiggle room)
and anything that doesn’t get done goes on a list for tomorrow… and this cycle continues.
This is the most basic approach I’ve found that is extremely helpful if you aren’t doing any kind of organizing. I’m kicking up the process a notch now though with more tracking abilities.
Do you know the 60-30-10 rule?
It says you should spend 60 percent of your time working on your projects, 30 percent on marketing/selling, and 10 percent on management and administration. Make-Market-Manage. Every day. So in a typical 10 hour day, 6 hours will be spent working, 3 hours marketing/aquiring new customers, and 1 hour for administrative stuff.
In my business, I like to have a 60-30-10 rule of 60% of time on selling, 30% of time on doing the actual work, and 10% on things relating to running the business. I’ve found that when I go to 60% of time on actual work, I’m not doing enough selling, and when that actual work goes away, I’m back on the beach and scrambling for work.
Being sales-driven has made a huge difference around here.
I felt very descibed with all those thing that we must do when we are owners and employees at the same time.
thaxs
Don’t forget to double/triple check spelling and grammar! It’s a huge turn off for a lot of people. You’d be amazed at how much respect you can lose from a simple typo!
Great post. Learnt a few things here about multitaksing.