6 Expert Tips to Arrange Your Freelance Work Like A Boss

Our capacity to effectively self-organize and manage our time has an impact on productivity and efficiency. Freelancers, who often have to jump from one deadline to the next, would have a much harder time working without them.

How can you streamline your work process:

1. Focus on acquiring loyal customers and cultivating relationships with other professionals

It’s challenging to be on the lookout for new clients all the time. It’s important to take your time while learning about a customer’s needs.

At least 30% of freelancers across industries spend between three and six hours each week actively seeking new work. If you have a steady clientele base, you can cut down on this amount of time. 

Clients are more likely to hire a freelancer again if they are satisfied with their performance and adherence to deadlines. Keep in mind, too, that consistent cooperation deserves recognition. Consider creating some sort of rewarding loyalty program for your most loyal customers.

If you hire a copywriter to produce multiple texts, the price per text goes down. For every fourth order, designers and developers might offer a nice discount as well.

2. Record when you start and end your work each day

Setting a schedule is a great way to keep yourself in check, concentrate on what has to be done most, and keep tabs on how much you got done today and what you still have to accomplish tomorrow.

If you don’t make this a habit, you can find yourself working well into the night.

Put your plans and objectives for the following day on paper.

3. Determine your long-term objectives

When you have something to look back on, moving forward is a lot simpler. And it shouldn’t just be the objective of “completing the current project”; rather, it should be a fully-fledged roadmap of professional development. In order to accomplish this, you will need to give forthright responses to a number of questions.

In your line of work, what kinds of professional skills are expected of you? Find out which experts your clients value the most. What sets these freelancers apart? Exactly what do they have that you don’t? Create a list that includes both your hard and soft skills.

What are my areas of expertise, and where could I use some improvement? It is challenging to analyze oneself in an objective manner. Think back on the most recent piece of feedback you received from clients. Perhaps they mentioned excellent communication but expressed some discontent with the speed of execution. When you’ve finished going through all of the reviews, you will have an impartial map of your professional pros and downsides.

Where do I want to go next? Based on your responses to the first two questions, you may begin to compile a detailed inventory of the skills and personal qualities you wish to work on. When and where will you use them? Consider your career options. Copywriters who have mastered search engine optimization (SEO), for instance, may find themselves in higher demand.

4. Arrange your workplace

Keeping your workplace tidy is a piece of advice as basic as it is crucial. It’s considerably more challenging to locate an important item, like a note or a laptop charger, when your desk is a mess. The time spent looking for something might easily mount up to an hour or even more over the course of a day.

Aside from that, make sure that you have a source of natural light that is close to the place where you normally work.  Research shows that 43% of workers become more tired than usual when they do not have access to natural light.

5. Keep your finances under control 

The majority of freelancers’ unpaid administrative time is spent on accounting, the survey found.

Using spreadsheets or a mobile app, you can arrange your cash flow. The latter are equipped to perform a thorough qualitative assessment of their books.

6. Adapt your work schedule to your natural sleep-wake cycles.

Listen to and learn from your body and brain to find out when they are at their most and least productive.

Researchers had participants with varying biorhythms take attention tests as part of their research. Naturally, early birds and night owls performed better at different times of the day.

Consider the impact that your natural sleep-wake cycles have on your efficiency. If you feel better when you go to bed earlier, then going to sleep before 11:30 p.m. and waking up at 7 a.m. will work best for you.  If, on the other hand, you find that you are most productive later in the day, you should keep working until 1 or 2 a.m. and then get proper rest until 11 in the morning.

Summing things up:

Work that requires self-organization and solid time management is always challenging.  It’s important to keep in mind that while the time spent on routine managerial duties may seem excessive at first, this is really just a matter of perspective.

You should have no trouble completing your tasks quickly and easily if all processes are optimized and automated, and your daily and 6-month plans are properly documented.