How to Plan Your Day When You Work From Home or Freelance
I have been working as a full-time freelancer since 2012 and most of my work is done at home, that is, in my home office. I have tried working in coffee shops and coworking spaces, but I tend to do most of the work when I’m in a quiet, comfortable, familiar place where I don’t have to worry about finding a seat near an electrical outlet (and I don’t have to asking someone to look after my laptop every time I need to use the toilet).
I also know that I work best in the morning and afternoon; the closer to 15:00, the more I need a task that will allow me to react to information, and not generate it. For example, reading a book for review instead of writing a book review.
Therefore, I have developed a schedule that allows me to work best at the times when I work best.
If you also work from home and would like to develop a similar schedule, here’s what I’ve learned over the past seven years.
Know your chronotype
I am an early riser, both in the sense of “when I like to wake up” and in the sense “when I try my best to think.” Between 6:30 am and 9:00 am, I solve more problems than I do the rest of the day. This, of course, does not mean that I start applying these solutions right away, but it does mean that I am jotting down a lot of notes that are captured and scheduled in my Getting Things Done system during the first chunk of admin time in my workday.
If you’re a freelancer, you can take full advantage of your body’s natural tendencies to sleep and wake up. Yes, some customers may expect you to be available during “business hours,” but if you specify when you will or will not respond to email (more on this below), you can change your schedule as long as it is will not suit your nightly conscience or fun.
If you work remotely for a traditional employer, you may have higher expectations about when you will need to be at your desk. However, you can still structure your day to work in tandem with your body’s natural rhythms . Maybe you go to bed as long as possible and, for example, do not shower or dress until lunchtime. (Just make sure you don’t have any scheduled Skype calls.)
Make the best time for the most important project
What’s the most important thing you need to work on today? Whatever it is, devote as much time as possible to it.
Depending on your individual situation, your “best time to work” could be:
- The time when your energy is at its highest
- The time when you are least interrupted by an urgent request from a client or manager.
- The times when you are least distracted by your partner or children.
- That piece of time that has not yet been allocated for meetings
Whenever possible, work on the most important project before starting on less important projects. This way you are more likely to complete your most important project by the most important deadline. However, depending on your schedule and chronotype, you might be better off working on a “medium” project in the morning before devoting two to three hours to your most important project in the afternoon.
Not sure what is your most important project? It might be the one with the next deadline; it can be the most valuable to your client; it can be the most important to your boss.
If you still can’t decide, just pick one and get to work. Everything will be fine.
Set boundaries for email and admin
At this point in my freelance life, I don’t open my email until 10 a.m. This is, of course, a privilege, but one that I earned (proving myself to be a reliable and sought-after freelance writer) and created for myself. By setting boundaries for when I will and will not reply to emails, I have developed a work day in which I do not have to spend every work hour managing my inbox.
You may not be able to close your inbox during business hours – many of us cannot, and that’s okay. However, you can probably set aside a couple of blocks of time to engage all of the admin functions that come up on a typical business day: billing, making phone calls, sending and answering any non-urgent messages.
Right now I am doing a very short “rush message check” at 10:00 am, a 90 minute break for the admin from 11:30 am to 1:00 am (yes, my freelance career includes the same amount of administration ) and then I leave my post The inbox is open for the rest of the day, because that’s when editors tend to request timeline corrections or respond to presentation emails.
It makes sense to close my mailbox in the morning while I work on my most important projects. If you close it in the afternoon, when editors and clients are likely to contact me, it is not.
Find out what administrative boundaries make sense for your work day, and then set them. Keep in mind the most important frontier: closing your email at the end of the day.
Get more work done with a routine
If you want to maximize your workflow and not “stay late” in your home office, the best way to solve this problem is to create and stick to a routine. In particular, you will need a timetable that lets you know what you are doing next.
If you ask yourself, “What do I want to do this afternoon?” It will take your time away from the actual work, especially if you accompany the question with an overview of all your outstanding projects. (It’s also a good way to lose sight of one of those great projects, skip the deadline, and apologize to your clients and / or colleagues for not getting the job done.)
So plan your day. Give yourself two hours to work on a project in the morning, then a walk to the cafe and an hour to work on a project, then return to your home office for an hour of administration and two hours of work on the project … or whatever you want to customize it. Schedule your big email checks, your admin, and your breaks, and when you’re assigned a new job, schedule it into one of your open project slots. Thus, you will always know which project you will be working on next, and you know that all of them will be completed on time.
Establishing a routine will also help you know how much work you can get done in a day. This is important for freelancers who have the ability to take on as much work with clients as they can successfully get it done (and then stay up in the wee hours of trying to get it done on time), but it’s also important for employees. If you’ve been assigned more work than you can reasonably do, it’s time to talk to your boss about your workload.
So make yourself a schedule and see where it gets you. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t found the best and most optimized daily routine yet. In fact, scheduling is a great way to learn how to create this optimized routine; you’ll know pretty quickly if your lunch break is too late, or if you’ve scheduled the “most important time for a project” while your brain is still working, or if your most time-sensitive emails are arriving in the morning rather than afternoon.
Then use what you learn to adjust your schedule. After all, being able to structure your day is one of the biggest benefits of working from home, so take advantage of that!
Take breaks
Maybe you are pomodoran . Maybe you walk after your meal. Maybe you enjoy taking time out after lunch to watch the latest episode of anything (another benefit of working from home). Don’t get so carried away with your work that you forget to take breaks, but don’t get so carried away by the breaks that you forget to do your work.
Many of those who work from home are wondering if they should spend their working time doing household chores. I try to avoid doing housework during the working day – from a freelancer’s point of view, it takes too much time, which can go to paying for concerts – but I admit that on that weird day when you accidentally spilled lunch on your shirt, it is relief when you can change clothes and start washing immediately before the stain settles.
For me, the immediacy of working from home makes it so effective. If you need to do something, such as throwing your shirt in the wash or going for a walk to clear your head, or answering an urgent message from a family member, you can do it. Likewise, if you want to tackle this big project first thing in the morning or late at night, or just for two focused, uninterrupted hours in the afternoon, you can. Working from home gives you the freedom to create a schedule that works for you, so use these tips to structure your own work day from home – and if those suggestions don’t work for you, make changes until you create a work day that does.
Then get to work.