There are lots of great things about freelance, such as not being tied to a desk, flexible working hours and little, if any, supervision. All freelance web designers probably realize that one of the biggest challenges of their job is the issue of productivity. How to motivate yourself and stay productive every day with no external supervisors telling us to complete a task right now? Here are five practical productivity hacks for all freelance web designers who want to boost their performance.
1. Establish a routine (and stick to it)
Setting up a clear schedule with slots devoted to specific tasks is essential for staying productive at any remote job. Routine will only help you to structure your day and make sure that every minute is spent right.
Scheduling your work has another advantage – it allows you to plan regular breaks and allocate time for potential meetings, helping you to get the most from every day of your work. To help you stick with your schedule, try some apps like Todoist (http://todoist.com/), OmniFocus (http://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus/) or Remember the Milk (http://www.rememberthemilk.com/).
2. Know your productivity cycle
Knowing yourself and your best moments for focus will help you structure your daily schedule around them, devoting other times to lighter tasks like responding to e-mails or researching. Some people work best in the morning, other find themselves more alert in the afternoons – your job allows you the flexibility of choosing your own working hours, so start using it to your advantage.
3. Prioritize
If you've got several projects running simultaneously, you simply must know how to arrange your tasks. Otherwise, you risk spending too much time on projects that aren't of primary importance to your main goal. Learn how to prioritize your tasks and stick to your working schedule – doing it right, you'll complete all your projects on time and find a moment to relax every day.
4. Set deadlines for your work
Accurately estimate the number of hours required by each and every project on your agenda. This will help you to calculate how much time you can devote to a project each day and when to set yourself the deadline for finishing it. Knowing all this is also a great help in pricing your services. One glance at a project will let you estimate the time you'll need for delivering it and its costs.
5. Avoid distractions
Finally, you should do all you can to avoid the things that distract you most. Is it your neighbour’s incessantly crying child or the background noise of the street? Knowing what makes it hard for you to concentrate will help you to remove it from your working environment. If your neighbourhood is particularly noisy, why not try to rent a co-working space? Establish your boundaries and help yourself maintain the focus.
Keeping yourself productive every day isn't easy, but with a bit of good organization and some handy tools, you can improve your productivity and deliver more completed web design projects than ever.
Tess Pajaron is a Community Manager at Open Colleges, an online learning provider based in Sydney, Australia. She has a background in Business Administration and Management.
it defintely make sense not to do multi-tasking and aslways better to focus on one thing rather than focusing on many things at the same time as that will end up delaying all of those tasks. Nice article and thanks for sharing. Viktor, Mediatimes