How to make your day productive, if you’re a freelance designer
The first thing that influences positively the overall productivity of a freelance web designer is a quiet and comfortable workplace. Ideally this should be a separate room, designated only for work. Try to eliminate all distractions that can keep you from working and take much time. Switch off all internet messengers and email notifications, your cell phone and the TV. Keep your desktop clean and orderly.
Find the most productive part of the day and try to optimize your schedule to fit into this part, this way you’ll have better chances to achieve desired results.
Remember you shouldn’t jump to work right away after waking up. Except for doing all the usual stuff like taking shower and having breakfast, you need to think about the ways how to manage doing more things during the day and consider what you should do to achieve this. If you’re working as a freelance web designer, start your working day from reading a to-do list you’ve prepared yesterday. Such a list will help you not to waste time on thinking how to arrange the working process in order to do more. A to-do list is a must when you’re working on large web design projects with a deadline.
When you finally get down to business, try to do the hardest tasks at the beginning. It will make your day more productive as other things you’ll do will seem much easier.
While working on a computer, take a 15-minute break after every hour of activity. Don’t use this break to look at your social media account, watch a video or read someone’s blog. Try to get up from the computer; this break is necessary for your eyesight.
Another way to increase your web design productivity is to work out every day. I noticed that physical exercises brace up, and after a small training people usually feel a surge of energy and work better and faster.
Use timers for every task you accomplish. There are special online services or small computer applications that time your work and leisure. After timing your results analyze why it took you so long to perform certain activity, or what helped you do it so quickly.
At the end of the day do all the accounting work, record all income and expenses during the day. It is much easier to do the bookkeeping everyday while you still remember things, than calculating all your operations once a month.
Actually, there are many things that should better be done in the evening, after finishing all your work. As it was mentioned, a list of things to do is better prepared in the evening to shorten the time for considerations in the morning. Check also all your e-mails and internet messengers that you weren’t using during the day. Take time to answer all important messages and letters, they might bring you new clients and projects in the future.
Back up all the information after you finished your work. You need to have an external HDD or use special online services which provide server space for backups. Try to automate this process, because backing up all your web design works is a must, in case if you don’t want to lose some important files and your portfolio.
At the end of the day evaluate all the web design work you have completed during the day. If the results were less than you’ve expected, analyze the reasons. This way in some period of time you’ll learn to notice the things that distract you and eliminate them to increase your productivity.
(courtesy: www.webdesignerdepot.com)
(courtesy: www.webdesignerdepot.com)
