(Ed. note: Genevieve DeGuzman is a bit of a whiz when it comes to organising her workload. These tips should help you get organised too and start 2012 off on the right foot. Happy New Year, by the way!)
Supported by Plantronics. Simply Smarter Communication solutions for the Mobile Professional
1. Blur the work-life boundaries.
One of the biggest challenges for hard-working mobile professionals is how to manage and balance their work and personal lives. Many independent workers, from freelancers and entrepreneurs, to startups and consultants, boast about the freedom and personal autonomy their work affords them— but actually do very little to change how they work to reflect these values.
Inadvertently, many end up trying to conform to the old, familiar practices defined by the conventional 9-to-5 office setup. But work-life balance doesn’t mean strict quarantine. Rather than trying to squeeze work into an 8- or 10-hour time period and adapting our lives around this rigid, corporate clockwork, try knocking down the walls that separate the two and integrating work and leisure.
As an independent worker, you’re most likely doing what you love and find work gratifying, so this is less tricky than it sounds. Most successful independent workers I know are more productive because they don’t try to lead two, separate lives. They don’t compartmentalize how they work— and this means carefully blurring the boundaries between work and leisure. If you feel like tinkering on that report after dinner, go ahead. If you want to skip your morning number crunching sessions to check out that museum exhibit downtown, go for it and don’t feel guilty. Time during the week expands tremendously when you stop segmenting your day into work life vs. personal life mini-epic battles.
2. Use to-do lists to create momentum in your workday.
Weekly and daily to-do lists are great tools (especially when used in conjunction with weekly status notes) to create a sense of personal accomplishment as you work. Ticking off items on the lists can be greatly satisfying and helps stave off creeping procrastination (even Renaissance geniuses kept them). Integrate your personal and work-related lists to create a fluid sense of what needs to be done for the day and the rest of the week.
Paper or digital? It all depends on your work style and personal preference. Digital calendars can be synced on your computer and mobile devices and are easy to update and keep track of. At the same time, it’s easy for your electronic lists to get buried under other applications. Out of sight, out of mind. Paper is messy, but it’s hard to ignore that list tacked to your wall like a pouty pinup model. My personal preference is to keep a digital calendar of all my appointments, deadlines, and major milestones (on iCal and Google Calendar), and a cheap, eyesore of a whiteboard where I scrawl my daily and weekly task lists. As I burn through my lists, I happily cross out items with a big, fat red marker.
3. Be nimble with your time to stave off burnouts.
We waste a lot of time feeling frustrated when we work because we force ourselves to do certain tasks when we’re not at our most productive. Can’t concentrate at your desk because you’re distracted by the beautiful, sunny weather outside? Hit File > Save and take an hour to go for a run in the park. Don’t sit uselessly at your computer just because it’s 10 a.m. and you feel guilty that you haven’t checked off “Write client proposal” on your to-do list yet. When you find yourself feeling this way, manage your restlessness by taking an hour to catch your breath. You don’t have to jump ship and go AWOL for the entire day, but these little timeouts can do wonders to refresh burnt out minds.
At the same time, at the end of the day, don’t resign yourself to leisure if you want to work. Maybe you’re itching to get on the computer to work on a new blog article that evening, but the bossy work-life balance angel sitting on your shoulder sharply tells you to crush all thoughts of work and watch reality TV instead. She means well, but sometimes it’s liberating to go with what feels right or to act when inspiration strikes. Trust your instincts. Take advantage of that late-night manic energy and move swiftly to your desk.
Yes, at some point the best productivity strategy is sometimes a grim, butt-in the-chair attitude. But as a daily routine, hunkering down in this inflexible way can quickly become exhausting because you’re constantly battling yourself. What’s worse, you’ll begin to resent your work, the pressure, and then feel wracked with guilt. It becomes a vicious, negative cycle.
Judge yourself not on a daily time commitment but on what you achieve for the week or the month. If the goal is to finish that proposal by the end of the week, make certain that you plan ahead and achieve it, but don’t feel like you should put in an inviolable amount of hours each day to complete it.
4. Outsource the work you can’t do.
When you’re working for yourself, it’s very easy to fall into the mindset that you need to do everything on your own. The risk is you end up feeling overwhelmed, stymied by these frustrating shortfalls in skills. But it’s OK— you’re not supposed to know everything. For example, you might be stellar at what you do for your business, but just hate doing marketing and PR to woo new clients. You don’t have to scale back just because you lack the marketing power. The solution is to outsource some of the work to others— experts in their respective fields— to help you.
One advantage of mobile working is that by working in different settings like the local coffee shop, Jelly, and coworking space you’re able to nurture a wide network of colleagues in different fields. Do you have letterhead and business cards to design? Talk to the graphic designer you share your morning coffee with. Need to create a mini animation video for your presentation? Talk to that instructional designer who works at the coworking space you frequent. Time to spruce up your website? That programmer who runs the weekly Jelly can probably recommend a developer. If you’re not skilled at something, don’t waste time struggling over the fact that you don’t know anything about Ruby on Rails or lack a grasp of typography. Time is your most valuable asset. Place a premium on it and don’t waste it.
5. Reinvent yourself and redefine what you do.
It’s a false premise that you have to work full-time at something to succeed. You can hone your craft and be 100 percent dedicated without shortchanging other aspects of your personal and professional development. Take some time to assess what you can offer to reinvent yourself and rekindle new passions in your work. Apportion a part of your core work day (say 1-2 hours) to exploring alternative opportunities to consult, coach, do speaking engagements, and write.
No job, not even the most backbreaking kind, needs our full attention all the time. In fact, there are many fragmented, idle moments that fill our workday. Make your time more efficient by getting the little things done during dead periods in the day (e.g. during that commute on the train; waiting in the line at the store; lingering at the laundry mat), and in turn, tap into all the time saved to cultivate other ways of using your skills and experience. Read a book, do some research, take a class— do the necessary groundwork to keep improving yourself and the work you do.
Genevieve DeGuzman is the co-founder and managing editor of Night Owls Press, a San Francisco-based editorial services and digital publishing company for small businesses and nonprofit organizations. For more stories on how to take advantage of collaboration to become more creative and work more productively, check out, Working in the UnOffice: A Guide to Coworking for Indie Workers, Small Businesses, and Nonprofits.
Photo credit: Helga Weber
