I have come across some great time management and productivity resources, some of which I’ve been able to implement and some that just don’t work well for me. So what I’ve ended up doing is combining some of my favorites.
Here’s what I do:
Yearly Business Planning
At the end of 2008, I had written a blog post about setting goals for the new year. In that post, I mentioned Alice Seba’s Planning Calendar that breaks down your plans for the year into monthly, weekly, even daily chunks to make it easier to lay out your goals and then the actions you need to take to achieve those. I’ve been using it since 2009 started (although not as diligently as I should be) and its making a big difference. It helps me look ahead and schedule projects and ideas a few months from now instead of feeling like I have to do everything now.
Blog Planning
This is one that I still struggle with. Thanks to the Blog Planner I downloaded from Blog Energizer, I can plan my topics ahead of time and even set up a posting schedule for multiple blogs (last count: 4 active and 3 badly neglected blogs). Its a great little tool and I keep it in my binder so I can jot down topics that come to mind. Then at the beginning of each month, I come up with topics to fill in the blank spaces and voila! A month’s worth of blog topics.
But I’ve come to the realization that planning is not my problem. My problem is action. I can plan stuff out but when it comes down to budgeting my time and plugging those plans into a schedule, I can’t find a balance between adherence and flexibility.
Planners for Freelancers
Well today I was reading through all of my RSS feeds and saw that Charlie at Productive Flourishing published a freelancer’s version of his popular planner pages. I’m so excited to try it out! He’s been putting a lot of work into this and I know it wasn’t easy because “freelancer” can mean so many things and we all have very different ways of working. So finding something that will work for everyone is difficult. (I even donated a few bucks to encourage him and let him know his efforts were appreciated.)
So if you’re a freelancer, definitely head over to Productive Flourishing and download Charlier’s planner for freelancers. And even if you’re not a freelancer, Charlie’s original planners are an excellent resource too!
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- 50+ Ways to Improve Your Productivity as a Freelancer (freelanceswitch.com)
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- Four Forgotten Productivity Enhancers (kevineikenberry.com)
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It’s so hard to keep things organized when freelancing. I use a number of tools from my standard ‘diary-style’ date book to my complex array of to-do on ToDoIst along with Rescue Time to keep track of the hours I give particular projects. There doesn’t seem to be any one tool that does it all so I love experimenting with the new innovations for time and schedule management that come about.
Thanks for sharing the tools you prefer and this new beta version of what could be a fantastic tool for freelancers.
Thanks so much for your continued support, April. I have you on a list of people interested in the planners, so if I don’t get enough feedback, I’ll pester you about it. :p
Which really means I’d like to create something that helps people, and if it’s not helping, or could be better, I’d like to know.
Somehow my last comment has your name rather than mine. I’m pretty sure it’s my fault, and this is why I could never cheat in school. :p
I fixed it Charlie.
Thanks for putting the planner together. I’ll definitely be using it and if I’ve got any feedback on it, I’ll send it to you. It looks great so far, I think it’ll be a HUGE help!