6 Effective Task Management Tips for Freelancers

This is Zoe Ashbridge, living the perfect dream life of every Freelancer.

But for most Freelancers, this life is a mirage. Instead, they find themselves:

• Always inundated with tasks
• Constantly burnt out
• Struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance
• Consistently missing project deadlines

If you're caught in this undesirable situation, only a solid organisational skill can get you out, as Zoe highlighted in the second half of her post.

As a freelancer, your organisational skill largely depends on your ability to manage tasks effectively. 

So, how do you do that?

Let’s walk through some of the steps to follow:

6 Effective Task Management Tips for Freelancers

1) Organise Your Personal Life

If you're someone who:

• Doesn't plan your day
• Often lacks motivation to work
• Prioritises the wrong tasks
• Forgets appointments
• Can't stick to routines
• Has trouble locating essential items

You’ll most likely need help managing your tasks as a freelancer. 

The sole responsibility of managing your task without external guidance can work against you. 

This is because, as a freelancer, the line between your personal life and work life is thin.

If your personal life is disorganised, the line can easily blur out and affect your freelance work. The result could be a situation like this:

Like a builder must ensure a solid foundation before raising a mansion, you should organise your life first. Only then can your freelance tasks fit in seamlessly. 

Here are the reasons why you should organise your personal life:

• Aids family respect for work time

It's a familiar tale for families to think they can demand your attention anytime if you're a freelancer. But if you designate a period to attend to them, they're more likely to respect your work time. 

• Helps in determining optimal work time

If, for instance, you share apartments with family members or roommates, it'll be challenging to work without disruption.

But considering their schedules when planning yours will help you find a time to enjoy uninterrupted work or client meetings.

This is how the freelance writer and Youtuber Elna Cain maintained steady business growth as a nursing mother of twins. She worked twice a day. When her twins are taking a nap during the day and when they've slept at night. 

By considering her kids, she was able to work at a time when she could enjoy maximum focus.

• It helps in determining time commitment.

One perk of freelancing is that you can adjust your work hours based on convenience. 

But if you're not organised, it'll be difficult to accurately determine the number of hours you can commit to work per day.

This can result in delayed project delivery or sacrificing family time to meet project deadlines. 

•  Promotes clear thought process

If you always have to sit at your work desk before remembering your pending home tasks, it's a sign that you need to be more organised. 

Such thoughts will physiologically clutter your mind and make it hard to complete meaningful tasks. 

But if your personal life is in order, you can focus on your tasks, give it your best, and work fast.

2) Think Less Like a Freelancer and More Like an Entrepreneur

A typical freelancer aspires to have a fully booked calendar, so they spend lots of time chasing clients, dealing with unreasonable clients, and overly demanding projects.

The graph below shows the consistent rise in full-term workers transitioning to freelancing.

Based on this data, most freelancers possess a rat-race mindset from their full-term employee background. 

They're used to perpetual busyness to prove they're hardworking and nodding to every task, even if uncomfortable. 

Clinging to this mindset will hinder you from enjoying the freedom and flexibility of freelancing and leave you consistently burnt out. 

The only way to be free from this is to start thinking like an Entrepreneur — a business owner. 

Entrepreneurs manage their tasks with utmost professionalism. The following are the ways they do so: 

1. Prioritise revenue-generating activities. 

Revenue-generating activities are activities that sustain your business financially. 

Eman Ismail, a successful freelance copywriter who also mentors other freelancers, attributed this technique to the success of her freelancing business. 

She says she starts with money-generating activities like responding to inquiries and referrals and sending invoices when she returns from breaks. This is so that she can avoid getting trapped in other indirect activities and not doing the ones that generate revenue.

Take a cue from Eman whenever you outline your tasks to prioritise those that keep your business revenue engine rolling. 

If you do not have inquiries, you should prioritise cold pitching and social media outreach. 

2. Track time-consuming tasks

The key to living your dream life as a freelancer hinges highly on doing more in less time. 

If you find a task that seems like a time black hole, it's time to pull up a seat against it. Analyse the job to know if it's worth the time it consumes. If your answer is no, take measures to cut down the time or boycott it altogether. 

Taking a cue from Eman again, she said she discovered that proposals take much of her time yet yield little result. So, she stopped sending proposals and booked calls instead. The result is that she now closes at least 3 out of every 4 for prospects. 

The key to a successful freelancing business is not hard work but smart work. Hence, be on the lookout for time-sucking activities with little result to show. 

3. Outsource

Freelancers believe that every bit of their work is all on them to do. 

No! It doesn't have to be. 

If certain aspects of your work aren't enjoyable or you find yourself overwhelmed with more tasks than you can handle, subcontract them to fellow freelancers rather than drown in them. 

You might think that outsourcing reduces your earnings.

In reality, it helps you in the long run.

This is because it helps you to save time, sign more clients, and make more money. 

Outsourcing might not be immediately feasible if you're a new freelancer still learning the ropes of your work. Your best bet is to work within your capacity. Take only jobs you can do per time while honing your skills and raising your rates to enable you to outsource eventually.

4. Offer clear deliverables

When I found the freelancing platform Fiverr, I noticed some sellers had scanty gig descriptions while others were detailed. The detailed gigs listed deliverables like the number of edits, word count, images, etc. 

One common thing among the profiles with explicit gig descriptions is that they looked professional, and the sellers have a business mindset. 

The advantage of embracing this tactic is that you will avoid getting caught in the rabbit hole of unpaid time-wasting activities. 

A LinkedIn freelancer started making her clients sign a contract before beginning contracts after another client took her through a rigorous onboarding and project approval process. 

Time-sucking clients will stampede your business growth because they make it difficult to estimate the time it takes to get a job done and plan for future projects. 

3) Optimise Your Workspace for Productivity

The 6th chapter of Atomic Habits by James Clear is titled “Motivation is Overrated, the environment often matters more.”

A Workspace filled with noise, clutter, and dirt will hinder deep work regardless of your level of motivation.

Hence, you must take deliberate action to optimise your workspace for productivity. 

Here are ways to optimise your workspace for productivity:

• Choose a space that supports long-term work.

In the same chapter 6 of Atomic Habit, James Clear said, “A cue initiates every habit.”

He also said designing your environment to trigger specific cues is possible. And this can only happen if you consistently take that action within that environment.

If you want to train your brain to switch to work mode easily, you can't afford to change the workspace constantly. 

Carefully look around you and choose where you want your brain to associate with your freelancing tasks.

This could be a space within your house, outside the house, or a coworking space. It doesn't matter as long as it's comfortable to work at any time.

You may argue that it takes away the flexibility of freelancing.

It's true.

If you've tried working in random places and it has worked for you, you may not need to confine yourself to a specific space. But if you need help maintaining focus, this tactic will help you.  

Another advantage of adopting this tactic is that it helps you easily dissociate your work life from your personal life.

That way, you can quickly tune out from work and give full attention to family and other personal activities.

Your brain will develop a cue formula in this manner: 

Inside the workspace = work activities

Outside the workspace = personal activities

• Don't compromise your workspace cue.

Your effort to create an environment that triggers work mode will be more effective if you strictly reserve the environment for professional tasks. 

Activities like napping, eating, watching movies, or scrolling the internet in your workspace will compromise the environmental cue.

Step out of your workspace to perform activities like eating might not always be feasible. What you can do instead is to do it away from your work desk. This could be a sofa or another chair apart from the one you sit on when working.

This way, you're training yourself not to entertain distractions when working. 

• Make your workspace comfortable.

If your chair gives you back aches and the visual chaos on your desk causes mental fatigue, developing work cues in such a space will be difficult. 

A comfortable environment can naturally activate work mode.

If you will be using the space for a long time, then it's worth every effort to make it comfortable.

Here are three ways to make your workspace comfortable:

1. Personalise it

If you have a dedicated office for working, give it a touch of things that make you feel good. 

Here are some personalisation ideas.

• Position your work desk to face a direction that eases your mind. 
• Use colours that resonate with you and evoke positive emotions. 
• Decorate the wall with family photos, artwork, a vision board, and framed quotes. 
• Create an inviting atmosphere with scented candles and essential oil diffusers.
• Use adjustable lamps to get the perfect lighting for your eye.

2. Practice good working posture.

A good posture is not just about what makes you momentarily comfortable but supports your long-term health. 

Here's how Jo Blood, the Director and Co-founder of Posture People, ranked common working positions based on their impact on the health of people who work from home.

As a freelancer, you should aim for a proper setup.

According to Jo, a proper setup supports sitting at the right height and achieving the correct posture.

To achieve the proper sitting posture, she recommended that you “Relax your shoulders and form a right angle to achieve the proper sitting posture. Your elbow and your forearm should be in line with the desk.”

Other tips and tricks Jo recommended are:

• Invest in chairs that give the most adjustability.

• Keep your feet flat on the floor.

• Don't sit over a full pocket.

• Invest in a footrest if your feet don't reach the floor as a short person.

• If you use a laptop and a monitor, raise the laptop with a stand so you don't strain your neck.

• Have your monitor before you so you don't twist your body.

• If you use two screens equally, set them up so that the meeting lines align directly in front of your face, enabling even movement between each screen.

• If you use only a laptop, have it up on a stand to a height where the top of the laptop is in line with your eyebrows.

• For extended work hours, invest in stand-up desks to enable you to alternate between standing and sitting using the Pomodoro technique to gauge your intervals.

• To break up long hours and promote movement, place a timer in another room and go to get it when it rings. 

As a new freelancer, you may need a better setup, but you can use less expensive alternatives and aim for proper ones as you scale your business.

3. Keep your workspace clean and tidy.

The least you can do to optimise your workspace for productivity if you can't afford great personalisation and a proper setup is to keep it clean and tidy.

Here are some ideas for keeping your workspace clean and tidy:

• Declutter regularly
• Keep items neatly arranged in drawers, shelves, and storage containers
• Label storage containers and cans
• Place only essential items on your table
• Dispose of old and useless items

4) Use Task Management Tools

While some freelancers prefer to use paper and pen for task management, more sustainable approaches exist.

Erin Balsa, a freelance content marketer who worked only seven months this year, said this when asked how she stays organised.

As Erin Balsa confirmed, task management tools make managing your tasks easier. They have features that help you easily plan, perform, and repeat tasks. 

You can use simple task management tools like Microsoft To-do and Anydo. 

But to enjoy more flexibility, you need more feature-rich tools like the one (Asana) recommended by Erin. They can help you:

• Prioritise tasks based on level of importance
• Manage project deadlines effectively
• Sync your personal and work calendars and view them alongside other appointments and events.
• Automate repetitive tasks such as scheduling
• Share documents with your clients
• Send you task notifications 
• Keep your client updated with the progress of work. 
• Communicate easily with your client. 

Examples of such tools are SweetProcess, Notion, Trello, and Wrike. 

5) Synchronise Your Body With Your Tasks

If you often feel more energised at certain times of the day than others, your body's circadian rhythm is responsible.

It controls your body's physiological processes, such as sleep-wake patterns, eating, temperature, and energy levels. It runs on a 24-hour circle and syncs your body with the day and night routine of the earth.

Understanding your circadian rhythm is pivotal for carrying out your tasks efficiently.

If your energy level peaks in the morning, spending it on your freelancing tasks is best. Working with your low energy level could mean feeling unmotivated and uninspired.

What if your energy level peaks in the morning but is inconvenient to work? 

That's the exciting thing about the circadian rhythm.

You can adjust it to sync with your tasks.

Here are steps you can take to adjust your circadian rhythm:

Step 1: Create a routine

Determine the time frame you want to spend for sleeping, personal, and work tasks, and create a new routine.

Step 2: Be consistent

This is crucial. By all means, don't alter your routine to enable your body to adjust quickly.

Step 3: Be patient

How long it takes for the body to adjust to a new rhythm differs from individual to individual. Be patient with your body if it isn't changing fast.

6) Protect Your Mental Health

Effective task management is as dependent on your mental health as much as your mental health is dependent on it.

This means you'll enjoy stable mental health if you perform all the requirements for managing your tasks effectively. 

And when your mental health is stable, you'll be better fit to continue managing your tasks.

If you desire to remain a freelancer for the long run, prioritise actions and activities that put you in the right frame of mind from day one.

Besides ticking all the boxes listed so far, here are some practical steps to boost your mental health. 

• Make time to socialise: 

Don't fall into the trap of loneliness or staying home all day. Consciously nurture your existing relationships and make new ones. I'm not referring to professional friends but friends you can banter with and chat about life. Also, work your schedules around physical events that allow you to socialise.

• Use coworking spaces: 

Even if you have a home office, you can alternate it with coworking spaces. The process of stepping out to go to your coworking space is an opportunity to exercise your body, which is excellent for your mental health. 

• Plan for down times: 

Freelancing can seem seasonal sometimes. Some days, you're swimming in an abundance of gigs. Other days are as dry as a desert. Prepare yourself financially ahead of those days so that you're not caught bankrupt. 

• Go for holidays: 

Don't be tempted to work yourself away all year round. Intentionally make time to completely disengage from work, change scenery, and have fun. Many freelancers attribute holidays to helping them develop fresh ideas that take their business to the next level. So, it comes with business benefits, too.

• Don't compromise your sleep time:

Getting enough sleep is not a time wastage. What results in time wastage is insisting on working when you're tired. You'll work slowly, make errors, and suffer a creative block. 

But when you rest well, your mind is rejuvenated, and your body is re-energized to enable you to work optimally.

Consistency Oils Task Management 

Mastering task management doesn't stem from doing the right things when it's convenient but sticking to them consistently. 

When you do, you’ll create a better work-life balance, essential for staying focused and productive. Hence giving you more time to enjoy other aspects of your life, such as spending time with family and friends or engaging in hobbies.

That way, your productivity will increase, and you'll be more efficient in completing tasks.

This will lead to better job satisfaction and an overall sense of contentment as you'll be more likely to take on challenging tasks. As a result, you'll stay motivated and inspired and be more successful as a freelancer.

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