V-Insider: How to Organise Your Life as a Freelancer

We know that work-life balance as a freelancer is a tricky thing to reach. You’re constantly trying to navigate invoices, clients and differing projects, so being burnt-out and overwhelmed might be an understatement! Paula Ugochukwu, our Community Manager shares three simple tips to help you organise your life as a freelance creative a little better.

1) Your calendar is your best friend

I’m personally a big fan of using my Google calendar but in whatever form you choose, plotting your tasks and projects on your calendar helps you allocate the right time to each task and project. This helps you avoid having tunnel vision on only one project and falling behind in other things.

2. Track your progress - and learn from it

There’s no use ticking loads of stuff off your to-do list and never looking back at what you’ve actually completed. Spend some time analysing:

how long different tasks take for you to do
how much of your energy they required to do
how urgent/important they were

This helps you plan your next ‘sprint’ of work and more accurately assign time (and energy!) to different tasks. You are less likely to procrastinate if you use the information you’ve gathered before to teach your brain which tasks are the best to focus on at any given time.

Which leads nicely to the final point 👇

3) Important Vs Urgent (Vs Passive Tasks)

It is useful to categorise tasks as important or urgent.

Important tasks are things that need to get done. While urgent tasks are tasks that need to get done by a very specific date or time. Both of these tasks are necessary but these simple headings - whether written down or mentally noted - are key in helping you not fall into the ‘pit of overwhelm and never-ending-ness’ that you can sometimes experience with a traditional to-do list.

Passive tasks are tasks that are evergreen. They don’t have a specific deadline, and can be done in between tasks/meetings. These are useful on low-energy days, instead of trying to force yourself to be ‘productive’, passive tasks can act as a warm-up to the next task you need to tackle.