Planning Tips With Type Affiliated!
A new year means a new planner, and as I get ready to start filling out my 2023 planner, I want to share t with you about how I handle my planning.
It’s no secret that I’m a big believer in making plans, especially as a freelancer. When you’re working freelance, you are responsible for making sure things get done and making the most of your time. You are the boss, and without a plan or some structure that can be hard to do.
In this post I’ll be sharing how I make plans on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis to optimize (yuck, I hate that word, but I can’t think of a better option,) my time.
LONG TERM VISION
First, let’s start by talking about long term goals. How you spend your time daily should reflect your bigger goals, so I recommend starting there. Maybe your long term goal is to get to the point where you can stop taking clients and have an online shop selling t-shirts. Maybe your goal is to eventually teach design full time. Maybe your goal is to eventually have your own large design agency. If that’s the case, what tasks do you need to do on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis to make that happen?
Here’s an example from my own business. I had a goal this past year to enroll a minimum of 10 people in my online hand lettering class each month. Because of that, I made sure I was posting about the class at least once a week on social media and sending out emails that talked about the class twice a month to try to reach that goal.
DAILY TASKS
Now that we’ve briefly talked about long term goals, let’s move to daily tasks.
I split each day into five sections in my planner (and for the record, I use a paper planner because I like the format, but you could use an online planner as well.) Those five sections are:
Business
Social
Errands
Creative
Other
Under each of these sections, I put the different tasks that I have for the day. For instance, under business I might have things like: send invoice to client, update the budget, answer emails, send blog post, etc. The social section is where I put my to-do’s that are related to posting on social media. I manage several social media accounts on top of Type Affiliated, so having a list here keeps me organized. Errands are things I need to do for work outside the house. Creative (which is the most important section,) is where I list the tasks that I need to complete for clients that day. You can pick sections that work for you and suit your specific needs. I use the “other”section of my planner to record things like events, or odd tasks that don’t fit neatly into the other categories.
Sectioning your to-do list rather than just having one big long list of random things to do, helps you to stay organized mentaly. It’s hard to jump from doing something creative, to answering an email, to being creative again. By organizing your to-do’s by topic, you can better get in the mindset for like minded tasks.
The order of your list is important as well. For me, I’ve found that “worst first” is a good policy. I always start my day by doing the worst, most boring parts of my job (the business and social media sections.) Those tasks aren’t fun, but they’ve got to get done, and once they’re out of the way, I can free up my mind to work on more creative projects.
The order that you do tasks in might vary depending on your personality. Maybe you’re the most inspired first thing in the morning; if that’s the case, doing creative work first could be beneficial.
It’s also important to be honest with yourself and to be able to analyze your own behavior. For instance, I’ve learned that I have a hard time getting back to work and focusing on a task after I’ve left the house. If I run errands in the middle of the day, I’m always less productive when I get back. Keeping that in mind, I always leave my errands as the last thing to do everyday so that when I get back home, I can be done for the day. Figure out what works for you and stick with it.
WEEKLY TASKS
Most of us have good intentions to update our website, or create a new product, or to be better at sending emails consistently, but unless we schedule these things into our week these are the tasks that are easy to forget. Since none of them are urgent and pressing, they often fall to the back burner. Because of this, I have weekly tasks that I do consistently to keep things moving.
CLIENT OUTREACH:
Each Monday I do client outreach. Consistently reaching out to new clients is important, so on Mondays I spend a half hour to an hour researching and reaching out to new potential clients. By consistently doing outreach, it helps to ensure that my client pool won’t dry up and that I’ll be working with clients who I want to work with.
CLIENT SUPPORT:
Each Tuesday I do client support. This includes reaching out to past clients to make sure the work I’ve created for them is still working well, sending client thank you gifts, and interacting with past clients on social media. It’s much easier to get a past client to use you again than to find new clients. By keeping tabs on your past clients you can make sure you’re providing them with quality work and are showing that you’re interested and appreciative of them.
PROMOTE ONLINE CLASS:
On Wednesdays I take an hour each week to promote the online class. However, you don’t have to have an online class to do this. Everyone has something they need to market. It could be a course, a product, a service, or something else. Scheduling out time each week to focus on marketing is very beneficial and can help you achieve those long term goals.
BUSINESS FUNCTIONS:
Each Thursday I take an hour to work on business functions. This includes things like updating my website, improving my systems for working with clients, designing new elements for my brand, etc. We all want to find new ways to make our business run smoother but if you don’t take time to make it happen, it won’t get done.
OTHER WEEKLY TASKS:
My other weekly tasks include filling etsy orders on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, checking work for the online class on Mondays and Thursday. Billing and budget on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays and updating Pinterest on Fridays.
Once all these tasks are added to the planner, it usually looks something like this:
After all the set tasks are in place, I then add the daily tasks.
MONTHLY PLANNING
There are some tasks that don’t need to be done each week but are still important. For me, these monthly tasks include:
Writing one blog post a month
Sending two mass email a month
Creating one new product per month
End of the month budget review, time tracking and miles tracking (how much I drove for my business that month.)
At the beginning of each month, I take time to schedule all these tasks in.
STICKING TO A PLAN
Making a plan is great, but sticking to it is the hard part. It’s especially tricky when you work from home and are surrounded by distractions. Here are a couple ideas to help you stick to your plan:
FOCUS ON YOUR LONG TERM GOALS
It can feel really tedious to do things like client outreach or sending a mass email, but if you can focus on the long term benefits rather than how crappy it is at the moment, it is much easier to stay motivated.
FIND A ROUTINE
If you’re constantly adjusting what time you start work or finish work, it’s much harder to focus and get things done. The more consistency you can add to your schedule the easier it will be to jump right in and get things done.
USE A REAL CHECKLIST!
It’s satisfying to check things off, give yourself credit for the things you do!
Hopefully this post has inspired you to come up with a plan for yourself in the new year. What things have worked well for you in your own planning? Leave your thoughts below!
