How to Manage Your Time When Working for Yourself

Time – there’s never enough of it and for freelancers and entrepreneurs who are in charge of their own schedule that may feel even truer. If time is money though then managing your time well is essential to finding financial independence in your entrepreneurial endeavors.Whether you’re struggling to manage your own time or your clients’ round-the-clock requests, here are a few tips for getting your day under control.

Stay in the Zone

When you have customers around the world, clients may email you at all hours of the day and night because of the different time zones. Prompt responses are important but you also have to rest some time. One tip that we’ve found helpful is to write clearly in your profile and Gig descriptions which time zone you’re located in and that you will always respond ASAP but clients should keep the time difference in mind. For more tools and tips for managing your global clientele, check out this article from Meta Design Blog.

Keep Things Running Smoothly

As an entrepreneur, money may be tight but investing in your business is a key strategy for growth. However, it’s important to choose products and services that will save you both time and money in the long run. By keeping your business running smoothly with these tools, you’ll be able to spend less time fixing problems and more time focusing on your work.

Get New Management Skills

You wake up each morning, have your coffee, maybe read the newspaper a bit and swear you’re going to get right to work. Maybe you get distracted by social media, or TV, or any one of a million other things that can pop up when you work from home. Suddenly the day is over and you’re not even close to having worked enough. Improving your time management skills is important for maintaining work/life balance and for developing your business. Luckily Lifehacker has 20 great tips on how you can turn your time management around.

Organize Your Life

Being disorganized is one of the fastest and most common ways to waste time that could be spent on actual work. Keeping both your life and your job organized can help you use your time more effectively and efficiently both by helping you keep your priorities straight and by making it easy to access what you need, when you need it. What struggles do you have with time as a freelancer? How do you manage time issues? Tell us in the comments!