How to Manage your Time and Deadlines

Although not perhaps the most exciting part of freelancing, I think that how you manage your time and keep to deadlines is one of the areas that will most likely impact on how successful your career will be.

Managing your time efficiently

It is so important to make sure that you work as efficiently as you possibly can. I have found that days in which I have not planned my time have lead to a decrease in my productivity. It is easy for work to pile up and to start feeling stressed out, but by planning your time you will feel more in control of everything that you have to do. This could be as simple as making a list of work that you still need to do or setting aside certain parts of the day or week in which you can carry out specific tasks, such as dealing with invoices. This avoids the need to try and juggle everything all at the same time.

I have always found that having a list of everything I need to do and the time by which it needs doing helps to keep me focussed and I actually enjoy ticking things off as I go. This makes me feel like I am keeping on top of things and I feel better knowing exactly what I have left that needs to be done.

Making sure that you stick to your deadlines

Meeting the deadlines that you have been set is imperative. In some cases it may be that you have the deadlines in a contract and you therefore have to keep these. However, even if you do not have these set in a contract you should always keep your deadlines to help keep up a good working relationship.

For me personally, I find it useful to break my work down into smaller chunks and work out exactly how much I need to complete each day. This helps to keep me on target so that I will always make my deadlines on time and in many cases with several days to spare. I have often found that by working this way that I have been given repeat work and in some cases been recommended for other projects.

If for some reason you cannot complete a project within the stated deadline then you must make sure that you inform the client straight away and offer them an alternative date. I would then recommend giving the client regular updates so that they are aware how the project is running. Normally if you have an emergency then the client will not hold this against you, they will often be more angry if you did not tell them soon enough of the problem.

If you are offered a new project and are already quite busy then it may still be tempting to accept the new work. However only do so if you really feel that you can realistically meet the deadline that they set. It is not worth risking your reputation if you will struggle to meet the deadline.