Freelance Apple

TV. Gaming. Entertainment in general, has always been a source of distraction and inefficiency to all people who have control over their own working hours. It is very easy to slip into a mode of laziness and time-wasting, spending endless hours watching your favorite comedy series, or playing Call of Duty 4. This is why it is paramount that a freelancer, especially, learns to control the amount of leisure time he/she spends during the day, as their livelihood depends on being efficient and producing good quality and quantities of work.

In this article, we will go into some depth into methods which you can take advantage of in your fight against procrastination and laziness.

1) Prioritize

Always keep in mind that any tasks related to your work take priority over everything. It’s good to keep a list of things you need to do, and re-arrange in a way that will allow the most important, pending business to be taken care of first. You don’t want to be wasting time, knowing in the back of your head that you’ve got a lot of work to do, and end up cramming all the work during the late hours of the night to get it done. Always work down your list daily, and make sure you actively change your list to reflect what needs to be done. If you look and change your to-do list at the beginning of the day, it’ll have a very positive impact on your performance during the day, and will put you in a good mindset to get on with the tasks of the day.

2) Focus

When going through your daily to-do list, always make sure that you put 100% of your focus on that task. For example, if one of your tasks for the day is to create a design for a website, then shut off all other distractions. This includes your messenger client, any emails, videos, music, or any webpages you have loaded up (only keep the design brief and the program you use to design up). This will prevent you from getting distracted by someone trying to message you, email you, and keep all your efforts on the task at hand. This will not only help you pump out work at a better rate, but will drastically improve the quality of the work produced as well.

3) Good Planning

Part of the reason why freelancers are prone to procrastinate, and become very inefficient and lazy is because they fail to plan their tasks correctly.

Fail to plan. Plan to fail.

The two most important factors of planning when you complete certain tasks are the amount of time you give yourself for said task, and the amount of other tasks you have to do that day. A common mistake freelancers make when planning is to schedule too much work one day, without spreading it out during the entire week. So one day, they’ll have too much to do, whilst the next day is spent unproductively. Be sure to spread out your tasks evenly throughout the week, to ensure you are continuously productive throughout, and don’t burn out too quickly.

4) Get Rid of Distractions Completely

I know some people who have gone as far as to completely get rid of the distraction which is causing them to procrastinate and waste so much time. For example, Collis and Cyan Ta’eed at Envato (who run popular websites like FreelanceSwitch) mentioned they got rid of their TV during one of their freelance podcasts – even ‘The Golem‘ himself has got rid of his! Why? It proves as a HUGE tool for procrastination, and by getting rid of it, you have the opportunity to become much, much more productive.

Keep in mind, that as a freelancer your livelihood is dependent on the quantity and quality of the work you produce – and that is why the issue of productivity as a freelancer is of utmost importance. So, get focused, and become successful!

If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to our RSS and social bookmark it using the icons below. Also, be sure to tweet the article using the ‘Retweet’ button at the top of this article.