Everyone is guilty of that 11th hour rush. We all have the best of intentions, but we stress and even miss deadlines on occasion. Ideally, we all would live a life where we can wake up early, have a nice breakfast and workout before the day gets away from them.
Using the tools already at your fingertips will allow you some creative ways to schedule your time. If you don’t plan, you plan to fail. Here are some apps already in your phone that can help you with this problem:
1. Your alarm clock. No, it’s not just for getting up in the morning. Use the timer setting to get through tasks faster. If you have a client who needs comps for example, those initial roughs ideas do not need to be completely formed yet. Spend time on the important things that the client will judge first, like the web header or the logo. Those will be the first things they look at so completely fleshing out a working comp is a waste of your time.
2. Your calendar. If you are already set up with Google Calendar or iCalendar you are already ahead of the game. Working as a freelancer means you have to multitask. People have this image of a multitasker as someone with octopus arms, but that’s not the case. Successful multitaskers know how to plan their day, they allow a set amount of time for each task and then they move on without looking back. Once all tasks have been run through, that’s when you can look back and revise or correct things.
3. Back up everything! Use more than one cloud resource and never lose a file again. This is so important I can't stress it enough. I did a write up all about Dropbox, but you can use any number of free cloud storage places on the web. I bounce around between Onedrive, Dropbox and Google Drive.
A note about cloud storage: I primarily use Google drive and Google Docs, because I have a Samsung Chromebook. I can work on my Google Docs offline and they update once I hit a WiFi spot. It's also easy to get more storage on Google Drive by being active in the Google community, if you snap a pic at a location you can upload it so that people can see that photo. If they are browsing tourist spots they like to show actual and recent pics of that spot in the Google search results, and that can boost your storage capacity. There are always other ways to back up. I bought a jump drive that's got larger storage capacity than my old desktop Mac for $8. Being able to work anywhere on documents makes life that much easier. It also saves you the trouble of sharing zip files that your client can't figure out: You can just add their email address to 'share' directly with them within Google drive. You can do the same in One Drive and Dropbox, but Google Drive is unique because you can create new documents within the platform: save files in multiple formats like MS Word and PDF. You can also create PowerPoint presentations and booklets.
Keep organized, that's the key to never missing a deadline. I keep my desk pretty neat unless I'm right in the middle of a project. I keep bins near my desk and once a week I cull the pile and recycle or shred things.
If you don't know where to start, just start on the easy things first. You build up some speed and confidence to get the big things done. If you're still stuck, ask someone for help!
In the end you have to learn what works for you through trial and error. Keep things organized, keep to a schedule and ask for help when you need it. You can learn more about these good practices and more here.
