After time travel, time management is the next really interesting topic about time. If Doctor Who was really good at time management, maybe he wouldn’t need to time travel, it’s worth thinking about, then maybe we could get rid of that moon-faced buffoon, and get a more solid business man in the role. I think we’d all be happier with that.It’s a tough topic, because it straddles the mundane, and the patronising and plotting a path between the two is time consuming, which really means I’m not managing my time very well, and begs the question should I really be writing a blog about this? Anyway…There are 5 steps to managing your time as a freelancer.

1. What is your time worth?

The first thing you need to do is work out how much an hour of your time is actually worth. To do this you need to sit down (always best), write down how much money you need to cover in a month and divide that by the average number of working hours in a week, which is approximately 40. Once you’ve done this simple sum you’ll have a figure to aim for, add a little on for tax (17-20% unless you’re thinking of pulling in the big bucks) and there it is, the number that destroyed guess work, the number that made all your customers suck their teeth, the number that will give you sleepless nights.

Having said that, you probably want to have different rates for different kind of work. I have a rate for Creative, Artworking and Account Management on a sliding scale, that means I can charge less for simple amends work, and always be covered for the time it takes to meet a client and set a job up, it’s really important that this isn’t dead time and you’re covering as much of your working day as possible.

Remember you’re not going to sell every hour of every day, but the bigger jobs are going to cover over the gaps, just be honest and don’t charge your clients 44 hours work to do when the deadline is tomorrow.

2. Estimate jobs on experience 

You know roughly how long it takes to design a logo, but what about a logo for that client, you know that that client? The super, super fussy one who is so meticulous over their brand that once it’s finished they put it in a glass bell jar and nobody even looks at it. Well that client is probably going to need a little bit more time. This is why fixed fees are dangerous, every job is different and needs a differing scale of attention, it’s painful to under-charge for a job, it gives me an actual migraine.

Make sure quotes cover a set number of amends, this way you’re covered on the 47th round. There is nothing worse than when a job starts to cost you money, it’s very demotivating and leads to bad work. Most of my clients have been quite understanding when the scope of the quote has changed, and as long as you’re fair and honest they always will be, after all, if you’ve followed a brief and delivered accurate amends, then it’s the client making this extra work.

3. Plan your work meticulously

You want to know the secret of Time Management, it’s managing your time. Yeah that’s probably going to become a new motivational business power-phrase now, so remember where you heard it first.

Julius Caesar didn’t say ‘Nobody achieved anything without a plan’, but he probably thought it. You need to know what’s happening tomorrow, and to do that you really need to have a simple system for planning where your weekly work is all going to fit in, and when it needs to be done, there’s plenty of online tools for this kind of management, but you know what works best, a chalkboard.

The chalkboard is amazing. You can write on it, but unlike paper, you can rub the writing off (which admittedly is a bit like paper). My chalkboard is the hub of my planning, I break all of my days into AM and PM and block my jobs into these sections at the end of each week. This means I know what’s in, where I have gaps and how quickly I can turn work around. It sounds obvious, but without that kind of clear oversight it’s impossible to track your time effectively.

Another important tool is project timelines, you need to use these to put the emphasis on the client, by this I don’t mean to be difficult, but if a project is going to slip, make sure it’s not because you’ve missed a deadline. By managing the timeline on a project carefully and hitting all of your own milestones, you can avoid the difficult situation of delivering a Christmas campaign in January.

4. Work at least proper hours

Dolly Parton was right about almost everything she said, but 9-5 was her great masterpiece. Except, I’d make it 9 to 5.30, but I can’t make that fit into the song, plus she notoriously left work half an hour early to beat the traffic.

You need to be doing at least a ‘Parton’ to make this whole thing work, generally clients expect work to be delivered within office hours, and for you to be responsive to their requests relatively quickly, and you can’t do this if you’re working on ‘Stoner Time’, waking up at 3pm slipping your jellied flip flops on and working in the nip until 5 in the morning, The Dude got away with it in the Big Lebowski, but he was a special case, plus he didn’t have a job.

5. Don’t take on too much

You look at your beautiful chalkboard, and all AM and PM slots are filled for the rest of the week, but a job’s come in, so what are you going to do?

Well obviously you’re going to take the work, work late and try and cram everything else in, but there does come a point where you have to stop taking on work if it means you’re going to gently let a client down. So consider this when you’re stockpiling work, you need to make sure you’ve realistically got the time to do everything properly, especially on PPH jobs, your PPH rating is one of the key factors in you winning work on the site, protect it by being brilliant and don’t let those standards slip.

So what are your tips for effective time management? How do you make sure everyday is full of work, and every deadline is met? Please don’t say time travel?

Guest Blogger Ben Brown is Creative Director and founder of Citizen Design. He’s worked with Apple, The BBC and Universal Records. If you wish to guest blog for us, please contact our Community Manager Dea-Marie: info@peopleperhour.com, thank you.