You want to start freelancing. You want to make more money by freelancing. You’re eager to get started with freelancing. You were able to find a freelance writing gig. You just don’t have the time to do freelance work.
What are some tips for finding time for your freelance business?
I’ll let you in on a little secret. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Mark Zuckerberg has the same 24 hours that you do. We all have the same amount of time. We just choose to spend it differently.
What are the best ways to stay productive? Let me share with you guys what has worked for me over the years when it comes to actually getting the setting right to be productive and do real work:
Work with your body.
My recommendation is that you need to figure out when your body and mind works best. For me it happens to be in the middle of the night. For no explainable reason I happen to be the most productive and engaged in my work from like midnight until four in the morning. I’ve pulled many all-nighters in the last year working on colossal blog posts or random projects. I’ve tried to wake up early to get work done. It just doesn’t work and I end up being grumpy for the rest of the day because I’m tired.
On a similar note you need to understand the importance of sleep while hustling in your 20s. We often glorify those that sleep four hours a night and walk around like mindless drones day with bags under their eyes the next day. Just because you don’t sleep it doesn’t make you more productive. I’m not sure how this myth got started because it’s absolutely key that you get your sleep.
On the flip side I’m not one of those that feel you need to sleep over eight hours per night. I find that if you eat well throughout the day you can get away with less sleep. You might not like this at first if you’re a huge fan of sleep. Once you start working on inspiring projects, you won’t even notice that you sleep less. You’ll be inspired to wake up early to start working on your stuff.
Do the most important task first.
I’m totally guilty of beating around the bush before actually getting any real work done. In the perfect world I strongly suggest that you complete your most important task first. Once you get this task done you can do whatever you want. Procrastinating on the important stuff just creates unnecessary stress and delays your time of completion.
I highly recommend that you do what’s most important first. Sure you can brush your teeth and grab your cup of coffee. Don’t start throwing in other random activities and losing half of your day. Going on Facebook to see what’s going on will only delay you actually starting your day and negatively impact how you deal with time management.
Ditch the distractions.
Working on your business proposal white you eat pizza and talk on the phone might feel like you’re multi-tasking. You might even feel like you’re effective at time management because you’re getting so much done at once.
The truth is that you’re just diluting your focus. When you dilute your focus you don’t give every task your full attention. You don’t need to be totally focused when you’re brushing your teeth or eating a sandwhich. You do need to be focused when you’re working with customers, responding to readers, or working on any of your projects.
Work in blocks if you lack time management skills.
Do you remember those dreaded term papers in college? How long would it take you to finally get started? I’d like to take a wild shot and say that it took you a long while to get started on your assignments from the day that you would receive them. If you’re anything like me you probably didn’t start the assignment until the day before it was due.
Why does it take so long to get started? Huge and audacious projects are just very intimidating. We don’t know how to start or where to start, sort of like learning how the stock market works. Don’t worry though because I have the solution for this problem.
I strongly believe in working in blocks. What do I mean by working in blocks? There are two different kinds of blocks that I wanted to bring up:
- Time blocks. I found that the best way to get started with any big task would be to setup a time block to do my work. This would mean that I would grab a timer and set a time goal at a specific time. I try to keep it realistic. If it’s something I don’t care to work on I’ll set a 30 minute timer. If it’s a huge task I give myself an hour. Then I work non-stop for that time block.
- Smaller task blocks. When you look at the end result of a major project you see this insane amount of work that needs to be done. This is why I try to break every intimidating task down into smaller tasks.
How do you deal with freelancing in your spare time? If you’ve found the best business to start in college, have you been able to stay productive and develop decent time management skills?
I'm a 24 year old dude that studied finance in school and now wants to make it fun. Over the past three years I've been helping readers like YOU make more money and keep more cash in your pocket. I've appeared live on Fox Business News and I've been mentioned in the NY Times. You can also learn more about
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I agree that doing the most important tasks first is one of the keys to being productive. It not only ensures those tasks get done, but it sets a tone and once out of the way often drives me to even greater productivity. That being said, working with your body is just as important. I am most productive between the hours of 9-5 (weird yeah?) and even if I get up at 7am I tend to screw around and get nothing useful done until right around 9am. And if I put things off during the day, if they aren’t done by 6pm or 7pm they usually end up waiting until the next day.