When you first get started in freelancing, you almost always have to continue working full time at your regular job until things get off the ground. Most of us simply don’t have the luxury of ending our full time employment in order to jump start our freelance dreams. But working a full time job on top of your part time freelance work can be draining and ends up being the reason that many people don’t last long in the world of freelancing. The key to being able to make the transition to full time freelancing is in setting goals that allow you to focus on moving away from working full time for someone else and towards putting more hours in to your freelance business.
Overview
When you first begin freelancing, you’re going to have a lot of excitement and energy for the work. This means that it will feel less like “work” than your full time job does and so it won’t be terrifically difficult to work full time during the day and still do your freelance work at night or on the weekends. But as the excitement wanes, you’ll have less energy for the job, so it’s critical to use that period of time when the excitement is high to the greatest advantage possible.
It is during this time that you should set goals for your freelance company. The best method of doing this is to sit down and work through a business plan template. This will help you to find the focus of your work and to determine both short and long term goals. You should do this early on because it’s a tedious task that will be easy to put off later when you’re beginning to feel like working full time and freelancing on top of it has left you with no time to do anything else. You should set realistic goals for the upcoming month, six months, year and five years.
To do this, you should ask yourself what role you want freelancing to play in your life in the future. Maybe you want it to provide regular, steady income that supplements your full time work. Perhaps you want to stop working full time for someone else altogether and make a career entirely as a freelancer. Knowing those goals and what your hopeful time frame for them is helps you to set up a work schedule that works for you.
Once you have your goals in mind, it makes it easier to figure out the appropriate pace for your freelance work. Its important to figure out how much you can do comfortably to keep yourself from burning out and to decide how much effort you need to put into marketing. If you are looking for 10-12 hours of work a week, you don’t want to waste money on a mailer that goes out to a huge list of people. This would waste money.
You also want to make sure you know how much to actually advertise so you can fill up your time. Often the part time freelancer can fill up this time just by spreading the word that you are doing freelance work.
Then you can pace yourself with your full time work as well as your side work to get your goals realized.
The thing is that most people can maintain a hectic schedule for a short period of time but to do so over the long haul causes stress and all of the physical and emotional problems that come along with stress. You have to take advantage of the burst of energy that you get when you have that initial excitement at the beginning of your freelance career to get it launched and to set those time frame goals that will work for you in the future. As you begin to fall into a routine and the energy levels wind down, remember to take care of yourself, allow yourself days entirely off of both jobs and let your mind and body rejuvenate. Then re-focus on the goals you set until you’ve achieved the right balance between freelancing and the other work that you do. To do so you should revisit them and keep track of your workflow.
Some Ideas for Managing Your Time More Effectively
It is tough trying to fit everything in your new hectic schedule. If you want to get any sleep at all, here are some ideas to get it all done in a shorter amount of time.
1. Keep a Time/Activity Log
If you are going to work a full time job and keep up a productive freelance business, then keeping a time and activity log is essential. With an activity log, you will be able to identify black holes in your schedule that can be turned into productive work time.
Your activity / time log will help you identify exactly where you are losing your productivity hours. You might find that you lose 10 hours per week watching television, or that you waste 10 hours per week cooking meals for your family. While you are building up your business and working full-time, see if family members and / or friends can help you with chores and other family responsibilities. Either way, your job is to find the time wasters and to kill them off. What would I define as a time waster? I would identify a time waster as anything that isn’t contributing to your full time job, your freelance business, or your personal well being. If you find a time waster in your life, then delegate it (if it is a responsibility) or dump it.
2. Create a Daily Schedule
Now that you have eliminated your time wasters, you should know how much time you have available to you every day. In order to stay on top of your work, it is a good idea to write down everything that needs to be accomplished on a daily basis. Write these activities down by priority level and set a time limit for each task. Allocating time limits for each task will help you concentrate on your tasks and also help you ignore time wasting distractions. However, this tactic isn’t for everyone as it might cause more stress than necessary.
3. Eat While You Work or at Least Skip Eating Out
Taking the time to go out out to eat is a huge waste of time that could be spent getting your work done. When I used to moonlight, I would take my hour lunch to get some work done. I would pack myself a sandwich and munch on it while I got some work done. I know that everyone needs a break, but to me getting some of my own business’ work done was like a ‘break’ to me because it was easing my worried mind. If you need to take a break, then I suggest taking 20-30 minutes to eat your lunch and then utilize the second 30 minutes to get some work done.
4. Utilize What You Have on Hand
Not everyone has access to the Internet or even a computer at their full time job. If this is the case for you, then don’t worry. I am sure there are other things that need to get done that don’t require a computer. Taking the time to brainstorm how you are going to go about your client’s project is always a great way to spend your time. This might include sketching down ideas or using mind mapping strategies. I am sure that there are parts of the project that you are working on that require writing, mathematics, or sketches. Without your computer, you can use paper to think things out and get them on paper. You can then quickly transfer them to the computer when you get home. You could even get paperwork done, such as invoicing or your bookkeeping.
If you have a cell phone, iPhone, Android or some other technology that has Internet connection or computer application ability, then you can utilize this during your breaks. You can take the time to answer your emails and your voice mails. And if you have the applications that you need to work on available on your hand held device, then you can actually get some of your project work done.
5. Utilize Your Downtime
If your job has downtime periods, then by all means take advantage of this free time (if you can do it without getting in trouble). If you employer allows you to use the Internet during downtimes, then you are lucky and should take advantage of this for your productivity. If you aren’t allowed to use the Internet without getting trouble, then respect these rules. After all, you aren’t ready to leave your full-time job yet and it would be a disaster to lose your predictable paycheck. For those of you who cannot use the computer to get work done during work hours, then I suggest getting a notebook that looks like a date planner (the kind that looks leather bound). This is the notebook that you will use to do your freelance paperwork. Since it looks like a date planner, people won’t both you when you are using it.
6. Avoid Distractions
Things such as the Internet, email, phone calls, TV, and friends are distractions from your work. I am not saying to give up your friends, of course. But you will need to let them know that things are busy right now and that you will give them a call when your workload lessens. As for the Internet, email, phone calls, and TV, we all know that these are all time-user-uppers. Try to only check your personal emails once or twice a day. Try to keep phone calls short and sweet. We all know that the Internet gets you every time. You go on there to work, and you land up watching Youtube. Try to only use the Internet for business and bookmark fun pages that you would like to come back to later. And as for television, maybe we should keep the television off these days.
7. Say No
There are always things coming up that are required of you. This is a good time to learn how to say ‘no’. This is not the time to take on extra responsibilities or to go out drinking with friends. If you are serious about getting your business off of the ground, then you need to use every extra minute to impress your new clients.
8. Changing the Schedule of Your Work Day
When I started moonlighting, I took a bit of a different technique to the entire situation. I asked my employer to allow me to come in early every morning so that I could leave by 1:00 every day. Then I had from 1:00 until bedtime to get my work done. I could then take on customer calls during regular office hours and have huge blocks of time to get all of my work done. To me, this worked out much better than breaking up my work time into small blocks of time. However, what works for me, might not work for you.
9. Employment with a Flexible Employer
As I said in the above paragraph, I started out my freelance career by being employed by a flexible employer. I was lucky to have already worked with this company for many years. They didn’t want to lose me as an employee, so they decided to work with me and my requested hours. However, maybe you don’t have a flexible employer. If you feel as if you yearn for more freedom in your full-time job so that you can flourish in your freelance business, then I suggest that you slowly look for a new employer with whom you can work out your own schedule. Even if finding a more flexible employer means taking a salary cut, if it helps you build up your freelance business, then I suggest doing it.
Wake Up Sleepy Head
I know that this seems obvious, but you can make more time in your day by waking up earlier than you normally would. However, if you just burned the midnight oil, then you might not be up for this. Even getting one more hour out of each day, can help you get everything done.
Here are some tools to track the time the time you are spending on your projects and same sites to help you find help and inspiration when you are feeling down and discouraged:
Google Calendar is a good application for helping to keep track of all of your responsibilities. When you are having top balance your home life, your day work life and your new freelance work life you need a good tool for helping to juggle it all. It is very versatile and has some great intuitive time management tools: https://calendar.google.com/
There is a free ebook on time management for creative people that might be worth taking a look at.