One of the best project management tools to take advantage of – whether you’re managing a new side hustle or already a full-time freelancer – is committing to better time management.

As a freelancer (or just in general), do you ever wish you had more time in your workday?

The answer is probably a resounding “yes!”

If you’re working as a digital nomad, you know what it’s like to juggle multiple projects, several clients, tight deadlines and explore your latest home away from home on an ongoing basis.

Some days, it feels like there simply aren’t enough hours to get everything finished on time.

Some days, you might even clock long hours to feel like you didn’t even make a dent in that project you’ve been working on forever.

There’s a good chance you began freelancing to avoid working the standard 9-5 job, get back more of your day and begin to enjoy life on your own terms. All of these things are possible, but they’re a lot easier if you identify how you can work smarter, maximize your effort, leverage automation, and become super-efficient throughout your workday.

We could write a book on all this, and many authors have, so we’ll just start by exploring the helpful concept of tracking your time more effectively.

What is Time Tracking and Why Should I Start Using This Project Management Tool During my Work Day?

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The idea of time tracking gets a bad rep because people associate it with the notion of ‘punching the clock’ at a typical job, in order for your employer to track your every move. However, time tracking can be incredibly valuable for your freelance business.

If you often feel like you’re pulled in a million different directions, are executing multiple projects and can’t always focus on one task at a time, or have a hard time “guesstimating” how long a project might take, time tracking is a great solution for you to consider.

There are numerous time trackers available online, and most of them, like Tomato Timer, are free.

However, many don’t go beyond having a simple “start” and “stop” button that you press when you begin, pause, or finish a task.   

Some project management tools and platforms – like Spera’s built-in time tracking feature – help you do more, allowing you to categorize your tasks by client or project type. Once you’ve set up the initial labels for where you spend your time (think of categories like “client name,” “invoicing,” “social media management,” “data entry,” etc.), then the tracking part becomes easy.  

By having a better handle on where your time goes each hour of each day throughout the week, you’ll be able to address major issues.

For example, if you begin a client task and are interrupted by emails or phone calls every 15 minutes, it’s clear you need to designate specific time slots for calls and separate time when you will be disconnected from the phone and email in order to work on projects.

Now that you’ve discovered what time tracking is and how it works, let’s look at a few of the first results you’ll likely see after implementing this project management hack:  

1. You’ll Start to be Uber-Focused on Important Tasks (and cut out the non-important ones)      

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One of the best, and also the hardest parts about working for yourself is that no one manages your time for you anymore.

Gone are the days of an employer telling you when you can take your one-hour lunch.

If you are a veteran freelancer, you may assume you have the time management front on lockdown. But do you really know how much time you spend on invoicing clients per month?

Is it 30 minutes or 2 hours?

What about the amount of time you spend on the phone with each of your clients?

These may vary greatly from week to week, depending on your priorities, but wouldn’t it be great to know at month’s end if client meetings took up 45 minutes of your time or 4 hours?

Time tracking allows you to understand exactly where your time is being spent, and as a result, limit time spent on tasks that aren’t profitable, or could be subbed out to someone at a lesser cost. For example, it may not be worth your time to spend 2 hours weekly dedicated to customer support emails for a client, when you can hire an assistant to answer them for a quarter of what you charge each month. By eliminating tasks with low ROI, you can shift your attention to focus on the bigger, more important tasks instead.

Next, explore why your client contracts are so key when it comes to collecting payment.

2. You’ll See What a Breeze Accurate Invoicing Can Be project-management-invoicing

As a freelancer or consultant, you’re most likely charging for your services by the hour or by the project. Either way, it’s key to understanding how much time a project takes you to complete, in order to determine how much you should charge for your services.

For example, if you’re offering blogging services, it’s imperative you understand that a 500-word post takes you an hour or more – and not 15 minutes – to produce, otherwise you’ll seriously under-bid your rate for the task.

Time tracking makes managing your billable hours for clients incredibly easy.

For hourly projects or part-time contracts, being able to explain where your 15 hours were spent each week can better inform both you and your client on how long a future project will take to complete. It also helps eliminate any questions of how productive you’re being, or whether the time you are charging your client for is justified.

Lastly, tracking your time allows you to have a look at where you think your time should be spent in the future, and which tasks are not worth the effort that you’re currently dedicating to them.  

As Pareto’s Law goes: 20% of your output produces 80% of the results.

Time tracking helps you find – and cut out – that unnecessary 80% of work that produces 20% of results. Which brings us to our next point…

3.  You’ll Gain Some Serious Work-Life Balance Benefits   

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This is what we’re all here for, right?

It’s no secret that balancing a work-life flow as an independent contractor can be challenging.

As your business grows and you acquire additional clients, the need to become hyper-organized is even greater. It’s proven that multitasking simply doesn’t work, and that in order to do anything well, you must give one project task your full attention at a time. As we’ve mentioned previously, most time trackers require you to pick which category you’re focusing on at all times. Changing a task requires updating your timer, so you’ll become more aware of when your attention is straying.

Plus, the simple act of having to change the timer when you’ve finished the task will help you stay focused and finish your project in the allotted time.

If you want to turn it up a notch, you can follow the advice from Tim Ferriss, entrepreneur, podcaster and author of The 4-Hour Work Week, and try challenging yourself to see how quickly you can complete something.

Think you can conquer that inbox in 30 minutes? Set the timer.

Already knocked out that goal? Now try to do it in 20 minutes.

You’ll be shocked at how quickly you can wrap up your work – leaving more time for play (or heck, a few extra projects) – when you aren’t dabbling in multiple tasks at once with a lackluster effort.

As a digital nomad or independent professional of any stripes, one of the most beneficial skills you can learn is better time management. Commit to using time tracking and other project management tools in your freelance business in order to streamline your process, free up more time, and develop an understanding of where your efforts are being spent on a weekly and monthly basis.

Plus, stellar time management in your freelancing business will give you more time to explore things you love doing outside of work.

Cristiano

Author Cristiano

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