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Tasha Goddard's avatar

This is interesting. I think (having worked freelance in some capacity for 25 years now) that the most important thing is to listen to your mind and body and learn their rhythms. I have realised that the winter months and the summer months are both necessarily slower and less productive for me than spring and autumn, for example. In winter, the short days and the dark make me want to huddle at home and I find it harder to do any work (or other activities, actually) in those months that requires me to interact a lot with other people. In spring and autumn I get huge waves of energy and fit in more walking, more socialising and work that includes interaction, and usually can happily fit in many more hours.

Another thing I find useful is combining habits. So, if I want to send out emails to art directors, if I tell myself to do so just before I stop for lunch, or when I come back to my desk from lunch before getting on with the afternoon's main tasks, I'll be more likely to do it. Or, if there are tasks I can do from my iPad/phone, squeezing in one or two after doing my morning Duolingo lessons - such as uploading recent work to my portfolio or a stock site; responding to some Substack or social media comments, etc.

And the thing I do almost always is use a (Dodo Blank Pad) notebook and plan. I tend to plan on Sunday evening or Monday morning for what's coming up in the week and what I'd like to get done and what I have to get done. Depending on what variety of jobs I have on, and there are usually multiple, I'll create boxes for different projects and then other areas, like art business admin, portfolio building, outreach, family, household tasks. And I'll put estimated hours/minutes next to each thing, as well as any deadlines (usually in different colours). And then I'll plan at the start of every day. Usually, I'll aim for a handful of quick tasks that can be easily ticked off (booking an appointment, sending out an invoice, replying to an email) and then 2-4 blocks of focused time. This, again, depends on what I'm working on - some projects lend themselves to a few quick sprints (this could be typesetting a certain number of PowerPoint slides, drawing 5 quick spot illustration, checking and updating a tracker) and others need a steady few hours to get deep into something (this could be editing tasks, sketches or project-setup deep thinking). And I almost always include a couple of tasks that it would be good to do but don't have to be done that day. If there are things left at the end of the day, they usually get an arrow added to them before I leave the desk pointing to the next day. Then they're likely to go to the start of the list the day after - not always, though.

I have tried a variety of ways to organised myself, including multiple different apps and I always, always, come back to this paper-based one (I do also have multiple spreadsheets to track individual projects and overall schedules when we have a bunch of work going on) and I have a drawer full of old full notepads that I should really recycle but I actually kind of love looking back at them. They are usually full of doodles, but also a wide variety of notes about all sorts of things. Not quite as interesting as reading back over a diary, but still interesting.

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Nanette Regan's avatar

These are great tips Abby! I find a fake commute really helps. I go for a walk every morning so that I’ve left home and arrived at work even though they’re the same location!

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