Tips to Organize Your Day's Work as a Freelancer
How to manage your workload and stay on track.
If you're just getting started as a freelancer, figuring out a good daily structure is a hard nut to crack. When you're working for an employer, a large portion of your day might be dictated for you. As a freelancer, you're on your own. On the one hand — freedom! On the other hand, it's easy to get off track if you're not careful.
I've been a freelancer for several years and manage my daily work using a few different tactics. A combination of paper and digital keeps my systems organized yet flexible, ensuring I consistently meet client deadlines without feeling overworked.
1. Plan out your day using time-blocking
One of the first things I do every day (after coffee and Wordle, of course) is plan out my day. I look at what I need to get done and the amount of time I have available. Then I plot out my day in blocks of time. A typical day might look something like this:
- 8:30 - 9:00: Engage with people on social media
- 9:00 - 11:00: Work on client deliverables
- 11:00 - 12:30: Lunch/break
- 12:30 - 1:00: Catch up on emails
- 1:00 - 1:30: Client meeting
- 1:30 - 4:00: Finish client deliverables
My days change because of things like varying client meetings, or something personal like a doctor's appointment. I have to fit my client work around other things I have on the calendar.
A critical part of this system is writing down my day's plan. I use Ugmonk and write down my time blocks on a daily notecard that sits on a stand next to my computer monitor. That way, the plan is within my line of sight all day. I don't beat myself up if something takes longer than expected, but it's a reminder of what I need to get done. You could also use a notebook and keep it on your desk.
In the past, I've added blocks of time to my Google calendar but found that it's faster and easier if I just write down my day's plan. If you want a more formal tool to help you manage work, Reclaim.ai will block off time during your day and adjust your calendar based on changes (like a newly added meeting). It's like time-blocking and to-do list management rolled into one.
Separate potential work from committed work
I do a lot of ad hoc work for clients, which means I only know my writing schedule about 7-10 days in advance. Even if I wanted to plan out weeks of writing work, I couldn't. (I also think that planning too far into the future is problematic, because it's hard to recover when something goes wrong).
The way I structure my work, I set aside an entire day for a single client deliverable. Your work might be different, if you have to do research or other prep that happens over a multi-day period.
In order to assess my bandwidth, I have a calendar of potential work. Some of my clients routinely send me the same amount of work every month. When I get the project brief, I add it to Trello. I don't want to add it to Trello without a brief, because things can come up (like the client doesn't have the brief ready for me). In other cases, I've had new clients discuss potential projects — so I know that I might need to block off a few days, but the work isn't committed yet because we don't have a contract in place.
I love apps and tools, but I need to keep potential work and committed work separate, otherwise it messes up my system — both for project management and invoicing clients for completed work.
I have a giant calendar in my office and use small post-it notes to block off days for potential work. That way, at a glance, I can understand my bandwidth. Once I get the project brief, I add the deliverable to Trello. Post-it notes make it easy for me to move things around as in-discussion projects change. I can also glance at my giant calendar while on a call and give clients potential project dates based on the work I'm expecting to complete for other clients.
3. Rely on automation to stay organized
Automation runs a lot of my business (and my life!). I rely on automation to help me understand what I need to get done each day.
For example, I use Airtable to keep track of invoicing and payments from clients. Two times per month, Airtable automatically emails me a list of clients to invoice. On those days, I know I need to set aside a little bit of time to prepare and send invoices.
Also, every Monday, Zapier automatically creates a new Google Doc for each deliverable due that week based on a template I have set up. It's a small thing, but it saves me time because I'm not creating those Google Docs manually.
You can certainly stay organized by writing stuff down or adding things to a to-do list app (I use Todoist). But automation removes some of the thinking from the process, especially for work I need to complete on a recurring basis. Automation also saves me time, so I'm spending almost no time on menial tasks, leaving me more time for client work.
Anna Burgess Yang
4. Streamline client communication
If you're constantly pulled into client communications, they can be a huge distraction during your day. Contrary to what many of us believe, we are not good at multi-tasking. Every time you shift your focus, your brain needs some time to adjust.
There are a few things you can do to manage your client communications during the day.
Centralize communication
Some of my clients use email, some use Slack, and some use their own project management tools. Checking for communication updates in multiple tools wouldn't be a good use of my time. Instead, I make sure that all notifications come into my email inbox. That way, everything is in one place on my end.
Set expectations around response times
If you feel compelled to reply to communication immediately, your day can quickly fall apart. In order to stick to your blocks of time for client work, you should set aside a block of time specifically for client communication, like replying to messages or sending outbound emails. And stick to it! If you're used to replying immediately, it's a hard habit to unlearn — but worth the effort because it will improve your efficiency each day.
To help, you can set expectations around response times with your clients. The bottom of my email signature contains the following:
I work asynchronously, so my response times can vary. Please do not respond outside of your working hours, and I'll do the same!
That way, clients know not to expect a response from me immediately.
Protect your calendar
As you can see from my daily schedule, I have several blocks of time set aside for client work. It's really important that I don't have interruptions during those times, because I'm often immersed in deep, focused work.
Because of this, I don't allow anyone to schedule meetings during my deep work time. I use Calendly to control my calendar, offering meetings at the start of the day and end of the day, but steering clear of the blocks of time in the morning and afternoon when I plan to focus on client work. Apps like TidyCal or Cal.com do the same thing. Google has even released its own version of calendar scheduling for Google Workspace users. (You can read more about that here.)
Most scheduling apps allow you to create more than one scheduling link. I have three scheduling links that display different availability:
- Standard meeting: Shows availability that preserves my time for client work
- Interviews: I often interview people for articles and they are time-sensitive, so this calendar shows more availability
- Virtual chats: Sometimes I'll chat with fellow freelancers or people in my industry. This calendar shows less availability, because they're not urgent
Build in some buffer time
While my goal is to wrap up by late afternoon every day, it doesn't always work out. Sometimes, work takes longer than planned or I'll have an unexpected interruption (like a sick kid who needs to be picked up from school).
If something happens, I can always work in the evenings to catch up. But my goal is to finish whatever I had planned for the day, rather than let the work spill over into the next day.
Mentally, it's a guardrail I've set for myself: get the work done that I've committed to doing.
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