This month's freelance work experiment involves bunching blogs together and dividing up my month.
For the last year or so, I've been trying different experiments related to productivity and my freelance work. Every few months, I try a new freelance work experiment, and if it works, I add it to my routine. The goal is to eventually create my ideal work situation with maximum flexibility.
This month, I'm trying something a little new and different for me. My clients are divided into three main types:
- Blog owners with orders for a blog post a week. These are the base of my business. They are regular clients with standing orders. I can usually count on them to provide enough for monthly living expenses.
- Publications and other regular and semi-regular clients that pay well and offer good work. These are clients that might ask for two or three posts a month, or have semi-regular projects that pay well. These are bigger clients.
- Irregular projects for irregular clients. These are the highest paying gigs, but they aren't as common. They can't be relied on, though, for regular income. But they are nice to have.
Essentially, I, to a certain extent, am willing to take some lower-paying jobs in exchange for a little more job security. However, the good news is that I can usually get the regular posts written fairly quickly. As a result, I'm using that reality as part of my latest freelance work experiment.
Bursts of Productivity and Task Bunching
For this month's work experiment, I'm using what I learned from a former experiment. I started working in bursts of productivity, doing more work when I feel most productive. I've combined this with the idea of bunching tasks together. I've done both of these things, and they work well.
Now I'm combining them. Normally, I divide my clients and workload up by the week. This month I'm trying something a little different: dividing it up by the month.
I decided to do as many posts for the regular clients as possible at the beginning of the month. I got those mostly out of the way, and that freed up time to work on other projects. Since I feel fairly energetic at the beginning of the week — and the month — I did many of the posts for the entire month as early as I could.
There were some projects that needed my attention during that first full week, so I couldn't get everything done then. But I got most of it done. Now, I have a little more time to focus on the bigger, better-paying projects. I'm also taking some time to work on projects that may not pay at all, like working on marketing my book
I'm still a little uncomfortable with giving up some pay, but I've also learned that it's worth it in the grand scheme of things. Well, that's the theory anyway. I am excited about another project in the works with some other bloggers, and I've been doing quite a few interviews as well.
The hope for this month is that my freelance work experiment, in which I cram in work early in the month, and bunch different types of work together to ease the flow. I'm excited to see how it goes — and excited to find out whether or not doing some of this extra work will result in long-term results that go beyond just doing the work.
