When you’re a freelancer, time management is crucial. Since nobody is telling you what to do or how to do it, it can be really easy to fall into procrastination.
Even though procrastination has proven itself to be an original thinker’s typical trait that helps them come out with creative ways to solve problems, you won’t always have the time left to solve anything if you let all your tasks for the last 5 minutes before the deadline.
And that’s why being your own boss is one of the most significant challenges freelancing has. Even when you’re working for some clients, in most cases, what you do is deliver the results efficiently; how you do it, it’s entirely up to you. Delivering efficiently means excellent results on time. And guess what? Yes, procrastination is not the easiest way to get that.
Knowing how tempting all kinds of distractions can be when you’re working from home or, even more, when you can work from anywhere, we researched the most effective time management techniques, and we bring them here to you in a short, concise, time-saving guide! So you can start organizing your time and boosting your productivity in the way that suits you better.
The Pomodoro Technique
This is probably one of the most popular time management techniques and my personal favorite. The Pomodoro Technique consists of dividing your work hours into 25-minute blocks (Pomodoro), in which you should fully dedicate yourself to doing the job without distractions, and then take a 3 to 5-minute break to clear your mind and avoid burnout.
You must keep the process along the day, and every 4 or 5 pomodoros, you can take more significant breaks, until you finish your tasks or feel like you’ve done enough for the day.
Don’t Break The Chain!
Jerry Seinfeld, a tremendous American comedian, scriptwriter, and actor, shared his productiveness boost method, a calendar system.
To apply the Don’t Break The Chain system, you’ll only need a calendar to place on a wall in your workspace and set a task or a list of things you want to accomplish each day.
After you complete a task, mark a red X over each day you accomplished it. When a couple of days pass, you’ll be able to actually see your progress, and this will motivate you to keep it going. Also, you can mark your sick or vacation days in a different color so that you can differentiate between them.
The Eisenhower Box
In this technique, you analyze your tasks using four criteria: important/unimportant and urgent/not urgent, so you write them in their respective quadrants. This method allows you to evaluate which of your tasks should be your essential priorities and those you have less time to accomplish.
This way, tasks in unimportant/not urgent are dropped or postponed, tasks in important/urgent are done immediately, and by yourself, tasks in unimportant/urgent are delegated, and postposed too, and tasks in important/not urgent get an end date, for which you still have time to accomplish.
Using this method, you’ll get used to prioritizing what’s more important and urgent, so you’ll give your time its best use. The Eisenhower technique was created by former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said:
“What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.”
So, How Do You Improve Your Time Management?
There are many other ways in which you can have higher management of your time. You can set a To-Do List, where you write everything you need to do for some time so you can cross out every line you already accomplished.
You can work with the 5-minute method and put your mindset into undertaking any task and carrying it out in 5 minutes, so you don’t have any excuses to distract from it. And as these, many other techniques are designed to boost productivity.
Still, there isn’t any magic formula to control time itself, but what you can do, is try to control what you do with it. Work routines and time management are very personal matters, so you should give any of these techniques a try and see which one works for you.
You could even try and mix two or three of them and see if you come up with something new and creative that might work for someone else too.
Everything is about responsibility and commitment. So, if you have the will to organize yourself to be more efficient in your job, I’m sure you’ll find the way, and here at Freelance Latin America, we’ll keep providing current, fresh information to help you grow.
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