If freelancing is the dream of many employees, the reality on the ground is a little more nuanced. The freedom which accompanies it does not go without a rigorous organization.
Working on your own account is a status that offers many advantages. Witness the number of workers who have passed the milestone since the end of the health crisis. This trend is confirmed in particular on the Malt platform, on which the number of registered freelancers jumped by 39% in 2021. However, the freedom, independence and flexible management of one's time that accompany it are promises that go quickly. in smoke without a rigorous and tailor-made organization. Let's find out how to best organize yourself to stay both productive and serene.
Use all-in-one tools to save time and manage your business efficiently.
If freelancing makes many employees dream - more managers, more schedules, selected and exciting projects - the reality on the ground is a little more nuanced. It must be remembered that the freelancer is multi-hatted, both business and commercial manager but also in charge of various administrative and financial tasks. Many responsibilities which can nevertheless result in stress and more or less strong pressure. Between the delivery dates to be respected, the declarations to be submitted, the quotes to be made in a hurry, the appointments with the customers, you have to be able to control your workload and manage the rush periods. Creating an effective routine, through the right tools, is therefore essential to directing your activity and staying on course for the long term. This is especially true when a freelancer is working on a launch and lots of deadlines are piling up. And that doesn't even include any contingencies. If it is impossible to foresee everything, we can nevertheless reduce the risk of them occurring by carefully preparing each stage of a launch. Successful backward planning allows you to progress daily towards your launch objectives with more confidence and serenity.
In this context, freelancers must find the best way to manage their time, their gray matter and their knowledge base so that they can accomplish their missions with clarity while at the same time creating space for their private lives. A complex equation that is based in particular on the adoption of tools that evolve according to their needs and those of their customers. This is all the more useful, because unlike employees who work more according to a collaborative logic, they cannot rely as much on the strength of the collective. To achieve this, they can count on the advantages of ‘all-in-one’ workspaces. They combine different tools such as an intelligent agenda, a note or project management interface, a tailor-made dashboard or even ultra-structured and customizable databases (for example for monitoring its customers or its finances) which are well suited to managing all of the activity in a single interface. This approach brings overall consistency to the work done, frees creativity and thus generates added value and productivity gains conducive to the development of the company!
Make lists to get organized and grow your business.
As a freelancer, we can never repeat it enough, organization is the key word to avoid being drowned in the files to be processed and missing deadlines. To manage your priorities, learning to make lists well, establishing schedules and sticking to them, is one of the fundamentals. In practice, setting up your agenda and updating your to-do list before starting your work day helps you avoid wasting precious time every morning and stay focused on your goals. By planning all tasks and deadlines in advance, deadlines will be met, customers will be satisfied and stress will be reduced. For example, a good practice to put in place is to note in your diary the deadline for each new project and to cut it into sub-tasks in your to-do-list to anticipate the next steps according to the objectives to be achieved. To make all these commitments a reality, the all-in-one interfaces provide concrete solutions for freelancers looking to streamline their organization. They do this by creating a very flexible workspace according to the evolution of the activity and the new needs that emerge.
Knowing where we are going and what we spend our time on is the most important thing in our business. If our priorities are not clear, we end up procrastinating or performing tasks that have little added value. To avoid this, it is better to take the height: first establish our vision and our objectives, then associate them with projects which themselves will be divided into tasks and events. Thus, we are sure to move in the right direction.
The other advantage of intelligent planning is to be able to free up time to devote to working on your personal development and that of your business. Whether it's developing your visibility, getting more clients, training to specialize more... it's better to have a clear objective and reserve dedicated work slots for it. Thus, once you know where you want to go, it is easier to cut it into steps to gradually move towards the final goal and sequence it by weeks and months by synchronizing it with your to-do list. Here again, equipping yourself with a tool that simplifies and automates the creation of sub-tasks, activities with low added value or allowing you to create recurring reminders helps to lighten your daily life!
Clear your brain and lower your mental load.
Freelancing is not just about doing a job for a client. It also means doing administration and developing your business over the long term. A freelancer can therefore have his brain in turmoil if he has too many things to think about, do or organize. When stress rises, it is neither good for work nor for general well-being or fulfillment. Thus, to prevent, among other things, the risk of forgotten information or to alleviate the anxiety of endless to-do lists, you have to get all this information out of your brain and transfer it to an appropriate tool.
How to do it ? The best solution is to centralize all of your work and data in a tool that adapts in the blink of an eye to everyone's needs and professional or personal habits. Building a high-performance knowledge center offers the advantage of having centralized meeting minutes, remaining productive or setting achievable personal and professional development goals. The latter, when developed in the “no-code” spirit, also present the possibility of building a unique workspace, as it is fully customizable. In this sense, capitalizing on a centralized knowledge base allows you to lower your mental load, relieve pressure and stay motivated over the long term. When a freelancer fully appropriates it, this second brain becomes a trusted partner on a daily basis. In particular, it helps him to achieve his objectives more serenely and to find all the information in a timely manner, anywhere, anytime.
In conclusion, without a solid organization, there is no sustainable activity or personal fulfillment in return. The organization, key to the success of a freelance activity, requires relying on tailor-made work tools that are multifunctional, flexible, scalable and customizable. They constitute the backbone of the activity of the self-employed worker to enable him to reconcile profitability and professional and personal balance... In line with this promise of freedom which makes entrepreneurship attractive.
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