How Freelancers Can Find More Time

We are well.

My mom and I are now COVID negative and at or close to optimum health. It was a bit of a rough ride, but so much better than so many other people had it. My mom was hospitalized and put on oxygen, but it was for other conditions unrelated to COVID. And she’s fine except for still feeling weak.

I was feverish and felt pretty miserable, but thanks to one vaccine dose, I recovered quickly. The fever lasted less than a week, and the awful headache for just over a day.

While my mom was sick, I was in charge. With broken bones from a fall (and how she contracted COVID — rehab facility), she needed me to do everything. With a fever, with my own COVID symptoms. You learn what you can manage under cruddy conditions.

That goes for work, too. I’d brought my laptop with me, and have every intention of working through my mom’s recovery from her fall. We didn’t plan on COVID being part of the equation, but the best laid plans, they say….

I took one week and a few days off. I had to. I napped when I could. When she was in the hospital, I took it very easy. I needed it — up to that point, I was up and moving from 7 am until 10 pm when I’d help her to bed.  I learned that a human with a fever can put in nearly 8000 steps a day despite feeling horrible.

I also learned that a freelancer can get just as much work done on limited time (and internet, which is nonexistent in my mom’s house) as they would sitting at their home office under normal conditions.

That made me look pretty closely at my work habits. I discovered some interesting things that I suspect are fairly universal.

Freelancers waste a lot of time during the day.

I sure do. In the same amount of hours it would normally take me to get going on a Monday, I had one article finished and a second one started. And since I was using my hotspot connection, I wasn’t online except to send the finished drafts to clients.

How do I waste time normally? Probably the same way you do:

Freelancers surf. A lot.

Because I wasn’t online much, I regained a disturbingly high number of hours. While I would argue that a few of those hours per week were missed marketing/networking opportunities, the majority of that time was Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and looking up stuff that had nothing to do with work (online shopping and browsing mostly). Or I’d be on LinkedIn writing forums, which don’t really further my career goals, but admittedly does give me blog post ideas.

Another interesting observation:

Freelancers talk. A lot.

I’m used to having conversations with fellow writers throughout the day. I LOVE connecting with my friends. Sometimes it’s a phone conversation, but mostly it’s email conversation. This past month, I didn’t drop everything to chat (and I love doing that). Logging on required hitting the hotspot button on the phone, connecting the laptop, and downloading the emails. I used my phone for most things, but answering an email on a cell phone is annoying. I need a proper keyboard.

It’s a good thing, too. Otherwise, I’d be doing what I realized was one of my worst habits:

Freelancers procrastinate. More than we should.

When I give my clients estimated delivery times, all of these time-wasting habits are already baked into that estimate. For the three articles I finished last week, I had given clients a three- to five-day delivery window. But because I had little in front of me to distract, I finished all of them within 24 hours — two of them the same day as the interview.

So once all of these distractions were removed, what did that make my current workday look like?

Like this:

• I worked three days last week.
• I will work three days this week.
• I will earn exactly the same amount those two weeks that I earn sitting at a home office with full connectivity.

Wow. Yeah. That’s eye-opening.

[bctt tweet=”Every #freelancer can  be more productive and less overworked.” username=”LoriWidmer”]

So how are you, connected freelancer, going to get the same work done in fewer hours?

Here’s what I recommend:

• Turn off the internet.
• Make it inconvenient to answer emails/texts.
• Schedule time to chat and surf.
• Don’t put off anything — assume your time is limited, or fake yourself into thinking you’re on a really short deadline.

Do these things and something amazing will happen — you’ll have more time. And wouldn’t it be nice to use that time to network and find new clients who can fill up those hours?

Writers, where in your day are you wasting your time?
What’s the one thing you know is sucking up your billable hours?