I tried several times to start an article yesterday, but 300 words in I had to give it up. I have a regular gig with a client and that gig requires me to send back revisions same day because of already-promised deadlines. If you know me, you know punctuality is my middle name (my maiden name, my birth name, and my only name). So six times yesterday, I had to stop and reshift my focus. While most revisions were minor, there were two that took close to an hour each. Back and forth, back and forth. After about 8 hours of that, I was fried. Today’s shaping up to be the same sort of thing.
So what happens when you have your to-do list all neatly filled out and work throws you a curve? Me, I work my tail off. I’m lucky – I was somehow born with a gene that allows for quick reorganization (I wasn’t, however, born with a gene that allows me to dust or vacuum, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing). I think the answer is to give a five-second assessment of deadlines. What has to go out immediately? What can be held for another day? Which clients are more flexible? Whose deadlines are set in stone and whose deadlines have some wiggle room?
How about you? What do you do when work gets in the way?
Prioritizing/multi-tasking gene way more important than the house drudgery one. 🙂
Work until it’s done, make sure I’m properly compensated for dropping everything to focus on something that’s just come in and needs immediate turnaround, and reshuffle the work as necessary.
I have a contract clause that limits revisions — usually two are included, and the rest billed at hourly. I have very little patience for continuous rounds of revisions.
I do the same thing as you. I take a look at what I have, shift my focus around and work like a mad man to get it done and try to get back on track.
My question/problem is not so much when work starts interfearing with other work because some clients can be flexible, where my issue comes in is when my daughter comes to me and tells me that I was supposed to go swing outside with her 45 minutes ago but now it is dark and she is going to bed…ouch, that one hurts more than the wallet.
Well, I have the list-making gene, but I also have the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants gene. The result? Lots of to-do lists lying around the house with only half of the items crossed off.
:-S
Seriously, though, I rarely ever get through everything on my to-do list. I’ve just learned that I have to put the most important stuff at the top, and not beat myself up too badly when I don’t get to the lesser items. They just get rolled over into the next day’s work.
Related to Devon’s comment, do you charge for revisions, or are revisions built into your initial quote for the project? I find most clients don’t require a lot of them, but some do. Obviously, spending hours tweaking stuff eats into my hourly rate. Just wondering how other writers handle this situation.
For this client, revisions are part of the deal. The six revisions were for six different projects. Normally, that’s not the case – I get two or three revisions a week. This was just the exception.
On other client projects, I do charge for revisions beyond two. You have to – otherwise, you’ll be revising until you’re six feet under!