Effective Prioritizing for Freelancers
Freelancing is often a juggling act. Not only are you working on several different projects at any given time, but you’ve probably also got projects that are all at various stages of development.
Starting new projects, finishing others, and diving deeper into even more can make organization and planning a difficult task. You’ll constantly be facing the challenge of managing your time effectively to balance all of your clients and to keep completing jobs.
If you’re like me, there’s nothing more satisfying than completing a job and crossing it off of your to-do list (well, getting paid is pretty rewarding too, but that’s getting off track). Personally, I function far more effectively when I have a challenging but realistic list of tasks for each day and each week. Without planning for the use of my time I tend to lose focus and spend my time less productively.
As I’m creating my task list for each day, and throughout the day as I determine how to allocate my time for each task, I have to prioritize. Effective prioritizing is a necessity for freelancers to maximize their efficiency and productivity. Because we’re all different, what works for me may not work for you. There’s no right or wrong approach, but we all need to find our own ideal method of prioritizing.
Before getting into the details of prioritizing it’s helpful to define the difference between “important” and “urgent.” The basic difference is time sensitivity. An urgent task needs to be done in short order, where as an important task is critical for some reason, even though it may or may not need to be done immediately. Tasks on your agenda can be both urgent and important, one or the other, or they could be neither.
By prioritizing we hope to find a balance that will allow us to complete the most urgent and important tasks. The difficulty sometimes comes when you have to weigh one against the other.
An example of an urgent task with relatively low importance would be an upcoming deadline on a small project for a client with whom you’re not likely to do business again. It needs to be completed by the deadline, so there is probably more urgency than importance.
On the other hand, an example of an important task with low urgency would be a high-paying job for a repeat client that is not very time-sensitive.
Factors to Consider When Determining Priority:
Deadline – Deadlines are something that all of us deal with on a regular basis, and they’re often a huge factor in determining urgency. Of course, the closer the deadline, the more urgency exists. You may or may not have enough time to work ahead and avoid last minute needs. If you’re able to do this you can eliminate much of the urgency and you’ll have more freedom with your scheduling.
Consequences – What happens if the deadline is not met? In some instances this isn’t even an option, but other projects will have a very loose deadline and a client that will not be bothered by an extra day or two of working time. Not all deadlines are the same, so if you’re unlikely to get everything done in time, try to gauge the consequences of not meeting each of your deadlines and prioritize accordingly.
Stage of Development – Although a deadline may not be looming in the immediate future, large projects will need to be well-planned and executed accordingly. If you’re only looking at the deadline you may not see the urgency, but you could still be way off-pace to get everything done in time. One method you can use to help with this is to set several deadlines for smaller milestones throughout the project, which will help you to stay on pace and to be able to easily track your progress.
Pay – Let’s face it, money can be a determining factor in both importance and urgency. It may be the amount of pay that’s significant, or it could be the timing of when you’ll be paid.
Client – Is the client a regular, repeat client that is responsible for a considerable amount of business? Is it a new client with whom you’d like to develop a stronger relationship? Is it a problem client that always has issues paying on time? Is it a new client that you’re unlikely to do business with again? All of these things can be factors that will influence how you prioritize.
Your Word – Although you may not have a strict deadline, did you tell the client you would do something by a certain time? Did you tell them you would do something specific that isn’t completed yet? For building a reputation, referrals, and repeat business, your word is obviously important.
Tips for Planning Your Time:
Break Your Projects Down into Smaller Steps – Rather than looking at an entire project, look at what you need to do during a specific day or week to make the necessary progress.
Prepare Ahead of Time – Personally, I find that it helps to have the day and the week planned out before I start. Typically I’ll spend a small amount of time over the weekend planning my overall priorities for the upcoming week, and each night I’ll lay out what I need to get done the following day. I find that having a plan done ahead of time helps me to get started productively each day rather than procrastinating and weighing my options before deciding what to work on. This may or may not work for you, but most likely everyone could benefit from some type of planning in advance.
Review – At the end of each day take a few minutes to look at what you’ve accomplished and evaluate how it stacks up to the goals that you had for the day. This can be helpful in prioritizing for the next day as you’ll know some things now have more urgency because you weren’t able to get to them.
Estimate Time Requirements – When prioritizing and planning you’ll want to make an estimate of how much time each item will require. I find this to be helpful for keeping me moving when my work is slowing down, and it helps me to measure how much I really got done in a given day or week. This can also be helpful for pricing future jobs. Maybe you’re really underestimating or overestimating how long tasks will take, and this will help you to identify those areas and adjust them for price quotes in the future.
Know Your Strong Times – I think all of us have some times during the day or the week when we are more productive than other times. If you’re aware of these habits you can adjust your schedule to take advantage of your strongest times and schedule less difficult tasks for your weaker times. Maybe sending out some invoices or emailing past clients doesn’t take as much concentration as your other work, so you may want to save those tasks (or something similar) for points in the day where you struggle with attentiveness.
Follow Your Moods When Appropriate – Sometimes you may have a few different projects with similar levels of importance and urgency. I’ve found that I work best when I choose to work on whatever appeals to me most at that moment. For example, I do some writing and some design. There are some times where I’ve planned on writing an article, but I just don’t feel like I can be as productive at that moment as I could be if I was working on a design (or vice versa). If the situation allows, I’ll change plans and take advantage of the productive time working on something else. This isn’t always possible, but I’ve found that it helps with my quality of work, the amount of time required to complete the work, and it also helps my mental outlook at that time.
What’s Your Experience?
How do you determine your priorities? What are some of your habits or pointers that you think may be helpful to the rest of us?
Leave a Comment
Great Post! I have issues with this all the time. I find I’m juggling 5 to 8 projects at a time all with different deadlines. I usually plan my work day in the morning. But your method of doing it for the week might me much more productive. Not only will it help me not procrastinate on those projects I don’t like to do, but it will help me from over booking myself, because I know how much time during the week everything will take. Thanks! Any one have any more tips??
Yes, program the time spend is a valuable key for the sucess in this work.
Good post– I’ve found that I’m somewhat naturally skilled at figuring out what is important, what is urgent, and what is not– and it’s been extremely useful, especially if you find yourself quite busy.
Another great step is to do as Tyler Durden commands, and “Let that which does not matter truly slide” and let go of things for which there are little payoff and/or consequences.
Great post. Prioritizing and efficiency seem to be the hardest part of working from home for me. Definitely my most productive days are the ones I planned out the night before. I find that all of the clarity of purpose I have at the end of the day seems to vanish with a night’s sleep. When I start in the morning with a list of things to do, I’m much more likely to get in and get going, whereas if the first thing I start with is “What should I do?” I tend to waste time.
@karyl – seems like women have better skills at being organized.
I feel time management is about three things. Plan, Prioritize, Execute.
I personally do not undertake projects of clients that are not clear about what they way. If they value my time as much as i value their time it helps!
Great article especially the part about leaving a list for the following day.
I also like the bunny doodles in the picture:)
Great post. I really like the priority factors. All clients/projects are not created equal.
I went full-time freelance in November. Since then, I’ve usually been spending 4 days a week doing on-site consulting work, with another 2-3 projects for my remaining day, nights and weekends. I think being in that situation (or balancing freelance and full time) makes time management a little easier, since you have so few hours to get your work done to begin with and procrastination is not an option. In the months where I’ve been mostly working from home with a reasonable amount of work, it’s much harder work a productive 8 hrs. a day.
it’s nice to see this put into words. i do these things, but never really vocalized how i do it. i’m with Karyl, i seem to have a knack for juggling multiple tasks, clients, projects and figuring out which to do when and why. Maybe it IS a woman thing.
Something else that i’ve found really helpful is when i have small tasks to do (update some content on a website, send a logo over to a client, etc)…something that takes less than 15 minutes…if i can do all those little things first, then there seems to be less clutter (in my inbox and in my head). Then, i’m better able to focus on the larger (and sometimes) more important tasks.
@Aditya: I know that the name, and the gravatar, aren’t especially clear, but I’m a guy.
It’s pronounced like “karl” rather than “karol”. No worries, happens a lot, just thought I ought to clear that up 
If anyone is interested in learning more about the “Urgent/Important quadrants”, grab First Things First (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Things_First_(book)) or The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People) from the library.
The first book deals directly with the Urgent/Important quadrants (Seven Habits cites it), though I’d recommend reading Seven Habits as it contains other very useful things.
Cheers,
Brad
Great stuff. I think one more thing that helps you be able to prioritize is to not get too overloaded in the first place. If you take on way more work than you should you will be left scrambling to meet everyone’s deadlines, not producing quality work, and the most important and urgent thing will be whoever just called to see where their project is.
Understanding your limits can help you get just the right amount of work, and prioritizing it as you suggested helps keep everything in check.
I already implement many of these suggestions, but I don’t usually review my todos at the end of the day, I’ll have to try that.
Thanks for the great post!
Good stuff here… I usually do alot time for different projects within one day, but I should try the week thing to see if that helps project completion. Its tough though when I always feel like I’m waiting on things from clients that need a little encouragement… but that’s another subject.
Joe,
I’m exactly like you. Without a list of things to get started with I tend to wonder around for a while without getting anything important done.
Melek,
Yeah, I agree. Getting several quick things done first can make me feel like I’m getting somewhere and helps to feel more under control. I usually start with small stuff.
I use highrisehq ( http://www.highriseHQ.com/?referrer=AHMADALFTY )
It helps me to manage my tasks, contacts and a lot more
Built with ROR. Its light fast and simple to use!
( I included a reference link, hope no one is offended! )
I think you have written this article for me. It was what I was looking for at the moment. Thanks
Very excellent post, I HIGHLY recommend Task Coach (the latest post in my blog is about it) – http://www.taskcoach.org/ – it is built in Python so it is platform independent. This app lets you do many thinks that have greatly improved my productivity – my favorite is that it allows you to click a little clock on a task you are working on, and it will record the time it took to complete that task (or that session).
Right on point and highly re-affirming.
Really enjoyed the post. Prioritizing is so important and not often have I felt comfortable that I’d prioritized accurately…. another post led me to a new flash movie on a product that I’m excited to try… looks like it will give great confidence that the prioritization is accurate and what’s best for you. Signed up to beta……
http://go.catalyst.com/?linkid=8034156
Prioritizing is important. I try to prioritize each day the evening before, so i’m not being influenced by the emails that show up in my inbox the next morning. Regardless of how hard I try, seems like a lot of days the task list gets tossed aside to make room for the unexpected.
Excellent post. I agree, I need a list, even though I often “overextend” what I think I can do for the day. If prioritized correctly, this isn’t really a problem as I can roll those tasks over to the next day, a little higher on the list.
Another thing to keep in mind is flexibility. Stuff happens. You need to be able to tuck and roll with the punches.
Great tips! Thanks a lot.
I have to admit that some time ago I hated all the to-do-lists… That’s changed since I started freelance work. Now I cannot imagine working without setting priorities before.
What I have discovered recently, is the fact that there are many tools that help you to organize your work. I started using OnePageOnly time tracker, which enables me to log my work hours. This free and simple (can you believe that everything is within the range of one page only!) tool seems to be crucial during my working day.
Great article! Prioritizing is not my strong suit and I often get snowed under.