7 Freelance Writing Hacks That Optimize Your Time

What I’m listening to: Wilderness by Middle Brother

What a busy weekend. We spent Saturday at the home show in the city — waste of time. The majority of the vendors were selling doors, bed sheets, sheds, steam mops….and we were there for kitchens. Besides that being totally annoying, there were way too many vendors talking into microphones. No faster way to have me walking the other direction.

And the vendors accosting you to get your attention wore thin quickly. We spent less than an hour at the show. The bright spot was the doughnuts we waited in line for at Reading Terminal Market. Worth every second in line.

Yesterday I cooked for our meditation group meeting. We welcomed friends back into the area, and a glad sight they were. It felt like the circle was once again complete.

Today starts another marathon for me.  I have six clients currently, and a number of the projects on my desk must be out the door quickly. So I’m once again budgeting my time and doing what I can to locate more hours in my day.

When it gets busy like this, it’s easy to fall behind. Instead, try adopting a few time-saving hacks that can make the most of your workday. Here are some places to start. And while some of these methods may seem like they’re not really saving you anything, you’d be surprised how clarification and limiting your time can reduce unnecessary busy work.

Shorten conference calls. I’d love to be paid for every minute wasted in a conference call. Clients will schedule an hour when maybe 20 minutes will do. Next time a client says “Do you have an hour free for a quick call?” (an oxymoron if ever one existed), don’t jump on it. Instead, try this: “Gee, my schedule’s pretty busy, but I do have a 30-minute window here…”

Clarify the agenda. Here’s where you can really reduce the time spent talking about the project and get to the actual doing of the project. Send your client a note along with your acceptance of the call invite. In it, say something like this: “In order to optimize our time, I jotted down a few of the points you mentioned in your email. Would you be willing to look them over and add where you think info is missing? That way we can be sure not to miss anything important.” By adding those few bullet points to your response, you can narrow the focus of the call, which means that call is going to be more productive and possibly even shorter.

Clarify who signs off on projects. I’ve started doing this and here’s why; knowing who has approval helps you and your client. How often have you heard something like “Oh, we should probably get Dave to look this over, too”? Clients don’t realize how the approval process can impact how much time a freelance writer puts into their project (nor do we freelancers, to be fair). You get clarification on how many people are going to be revising and clients get a clearer picture of who should be involved in the process from the start.

Stop listing. Start scheduling. I used to have a piece of paper (or even a Word document) on which I’d write every single thing I had to get done. If I was feeling energetic, I might have listed them in order of importance. Guess what happened at the end of the week? That list was usually recycled — I just pushed everything forward to another week. Nothing was completed. Now, if it’s good enough to go on a to-do list, it’s good enough to be scheduled. Open your calendar app. Block off time for every item on your list (space them apart so you have time to do it all and get your work done). Set reminders. I do this for most of my work week — to-do items get scheduled right along with the work. I try to do the entire week’s worth of scheduling at one time – not always possible, but worth attempting. My calendar right now for Monday looks like this:

• Blog post for Client A – 9 am
• Press release, Client B – 9:30 am
• Check with Client C regarding project – 10 am
• Check with client F about parameters for his website page – 10 am
• Transcribe interview notes 10:10 – 10:45 am
• Break – 10:45 am