Monday, January 4, 2010

How To Manage Your Working Day As A Freelancer

By Gavin Campbell

As freelancers it is very important for us to acquire good management skills. A good management system is important for us, as it will over time be vital in helping us to find the time to spend with our family and friends. The profession you are in is irrelevant, because time management is sometime we can all benefit from.

So many of us have failed to master the art of organisation, especially those of us who have made the transition from being employed to self employed. When the boss is dishing out the orders it is often less thought provoking for us in our day to day runnings.

When your completely independent, with no boss, it then becomes a challenge to prioritize, especially with all of the day to day activities which need to be maintained. Client deadlines and an absence of social support can make things a little tricky.

If we set and maintained goals everyday, it would actually make our working day a lot easier. It is always good to write them down, either on paper or digitally. There are even goal setting programmes you can use to aid you in this process of achievement.

Many of us spend plenty of time each week simply browsing/finding and thinking about things which are actually taking us away from our goals. We often say we need more time, but in actual fact we need to learn to optimize our time. We need to make best use of the hours we already have in a working day.

If you have not already done so, it would be a good idea to investigate some type of CRM (Customer Relations Management System). This sort of system allows you to save any type of database information, from emails to sales leads to prospective design jobs. There are some good free alternatives to the popular commercial programs out there.

If your a freelancer and you are on a tight budget, then it helps to store as much information as possible online, or on your system. Try and avoid printing lots of information, as paper & ink cost money, but saving information on a hard-drive dose not. It is also quicker to retrieve information if it is saved in digital format, as long as you have a secure system.

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