“Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.” – M. Scott Peck
Hey there astute freelance copywriter, copy solopreneur, or whatever creative name you choose to call yourself!
Are you struggling to stay on top of all your client projects, administrative tasks, and marketing strategy? Time management is one thing that we both have in common.
As someone who grew from working as a freelance copywriter to now running a solopreneurship agency, I know first-hand the importance of time management to my work. And today, I am sharing how I manage my time to ensure that I always deliver my projects on time. Hopefully, my strategy will give you some ideas for how to manage your own time!
Honestly, I think that learning to manage your time is the second biggest obstacle to being successful in business (yes, freelancing is a business) right after finding your first freelance copywriting client! As a freelance writer, you’re essentially trading your time for money. So learning to manage your time effectively helps you to get the most out of your time (and earn as much money as you can).
For the sake of being transparent, time management is something that I am still working on years into transforming my freelance writing career into a solopreneurship business. Thanks to the additional full-time roles of working a 9 – 5 while being a wife and mother, in my opinion, I still don’t have the optimal time management system in place. I am constantly tweaking my system to make it better. However, I can tell you that I am lightyears ahead of where I used to be when I was first starting out freelancing.
Try instituting one or more of these time management strategies and see what works best for you. The key to success in time management is trying different things to see what works best!
My Strategy For Managing My Time
1. I Use a combination of my Google Calendar and Notion apps
I mentioned earlier that you need to try different time management strategies right? Well, I hit a sweet spot in my time management system when I began entering important dates and meetings in the massive spreadsheet that is Google Calendar, then writing down EVERY task in Notion (set a reminder for important tasks) and letting these apps do the work of reminding me when necessary. These apps both track a lot of information, including:
- When my projects are due,
- When I will work on each project (“start date” vs. “due date” vs. “delivery date”),
- How long the projects will take to complete,
- How much money I’m making for each project,
- Invoice information (like the due date and invoice number which I have already created in WaveApps),
- How much time I devote to client work each week/month/year, and
- How much money I’m making each week, month, and year,
I mentioned that it was a lot right?!
Anyway, here’s what I do with all of that information. When I receive a new project from a client, I plug it into the spreadsheet in Notion noting the best date for commencement, the best date for it to be due, and the delivery date as agreed with the client. For financials, I include how much I am getting paid and how much I will make as a profit from the project. If I think that the project will take more than the normal hours or dates that I usually spend on similar projects to complete, I split it into smaller tasks and not that I will be working for less profit. I use a time-to-profit ratio to measure the profitability of a project so that I can focus on pursuing projects that I can maintain a low-time to high-profit ratio.
And then I colour code everything both in Google Calendar and Notion! Scheduled projects are always in red. Once I’ve completed the project, I turn the line for the project yellow. After I’ve invoiced the client, I add the invoice information and then turn the line orange. Once the client has paid me for the invoice, I turn the line green and I move on with my life because that wraps up that specific project!
Why do I do all of this work? Here are a few reasons:
- To keep track of when projects are due so I never miss a deadline,
- To track the lifecycle of each task and project: scheduled, completed, invoiced, and paid, to help me with discussing timelines with clients,
- To help me meet my weekly/monthly income goals, which is the minimum amount of money I need to make each week/month to run my business profitably,
- To make sure I don’t overbook myself, and
- To set aside time for other daily, weekly, and monthly work and family responsibilities.
If you learn nothing else from this blog post, I recommend that you set up a similar system for your own freelance writing or solopreneurship business, especially if you have other life responsibilities. This will give you a high-level understanding of completed and pending tasks.
2. I Create Workflows in Notion
Notion comes in clutch for me!
Using a spreadsheet in Notion is a great way to get a high-level view of your business, but you might find that you need more detail to complete your projects. That’s where workflows come in. Workflows list out specific tasks for each project so that you can keep track of all the little details.
You can use good old-fashioned pen and paper to track your workflows, but I like to track mine on a digital platform. Why? Because many projects are essentially the same. For projects like blog posts, where I do the same thing every single time, I just copy the task, relabel it with the new blog post topic, and change the due dates. Voila!
Many digital platforms can help you with this like Trello and Asana (I’ve tried both and LOVE them!), but I like to use Notion. Why? Well, because it’s free and I love how versatile it is.
Now here’s where it gets a little confusing. Notion uses different terminology than its competitors, so it’s a little tricky for me to explain how I use it. All the words in quotes (like “teamspaces”) are Notion terminology. But remember: if you have any questions, you can always DM me on Instagram!
I have several “teamspaces” on Notion for the different aspects of my business, work (my 9 – 5) and personal life. For example, I have one teamspace to keep track of my content and another to track my family’s travel plans (being a firstborn sibling, wife and mum is no joke, people!).
But for you, I recommend setting up two teamspaces: one for client work, and one for administrative tasks.
Within your client “teamspace”, you’ll add each of your regular clients as a “page”. Name each “page” after each client. To your client “page”, you’ll add all the projects you have scheduled for that particular client as “task”. Notion will automatically create each task as a new page. Then you can click on each “task” and add “subtasks” which will also be created as a new subpage. These subtasks are your workflows.
Once you’ve got all your client work added to Notion, it’s time to add your administrative tasks. What behind-the-scenes tasks do you need to complete each day, week, and month to keep your business running smoothly?
For example, I have a monthly task to remind myself to reach out to my clients about blog posts for the next month. I have another one that reminds me to check up on outstanding invoices.
Get all those extra tasks defined and scheduled, and you’ll be in a much better place in your business.
The best part about Notion is that, if you add due dates to each of your tasks and subtasks, they’ll automatically send you reminders. That way, you never have that feeling where you don’t know what the hell you’re doing when you sit down to work! You always have your tasks laid out for you and are sure that a reminder will go off when something needs to be looked at urgently.
3. I Work A Set Schedule
As a freelance copywriter or solopreneur, you have the flexibility to work whenever and wherever you want! If you want to stay up late and work from the comfort of your bed, you can! Want to wake up at 5 AM and work from your home office or dining table (like I do sometimes)? Go for it!
However, I find that I work best when I have a set schedule. Having a set schedule means that during particular times on particular days of the week, I’m usually working. Outside of those working hours, I am as far from my laptop as I possibly can be!
I do this for three reasons:
- Maintaining a schedule: Following a set schedule helps my mum-brain to focus. It’s 10 AM on a random Wednesday? It’s time to whip out the laptop and write!
- Boundaries: A set schedule also helps me to create boundaries with my work. I don’t work past 6 PM on weekdays, so if a client wants me to schedule a phone call at 8:00 pm, I’ll politely decline. Contrary to popular belief, being a small, service-based business owner does not mean that I am on call all the time. For your mental health, productivity and responsibility to my family, I must have down times.
- Planning: Having a set schedule allows me to plan out my time more thoughtfully (more on that in the next section).
Currently, I’m working between 11:00 AM and 6:00 PM every weekday with a 1-hour break for lunch and picking my child up from school. I also plan to work for 3 hours on Saturday mornings on content creation work for my personal brand.
So, what should your set schedule be? That is entirely up to you. Run some experiments and figure out what works best for you!
4. I Work Ahead
I will always move up the “start date” on my projects so that I can meet my income goal for every month if possible.
If you don’t have anything due, that doesn’t mean that it’s time to park yourself on the couch and watch TV. Work ahead! Your clients will be thrilled that you turned in their work early, and it will also open up time for you to take on new clients/projects in the future.
Working ahead also helps me to “buy back” more time to spend with my family, call my mum and siblings, or catch up on any necessary website updates that I am behind on. Yes, I personally redesign and manage my website. It’s fun to do and saves me the coins I would have spent on paying someone to manage such easy tasks.
I have been doing this for years – even when I was a newbie freelancer – and I have never been late on delivering clients’ projects. And spending time improving things for my personal brand always pays off with new clients. So, it’s a win-win!
If you do run out of all your client work, it’s not time to take a vacation. When you have free time, move full steam ahead on your cold pitching strategy. Follow your regular working schedule and spend the entire time cold-pitching and applying for writing jobs if you have to!
The great thing about being self-employed as a freelance writer or solopreneur is that you get to come up with systems that work for YOU. So if you try this one and you hate it, keep playing around with other time management strategies and making adjustments that suit your working style!
Do you have any questions for me about managing your time? Leave a comment below or DM me on Instagram!
