Get Your Act Together, Fool!
Posted by Justin Dupre on June 17th, 2008Staying organized is tough for a guy that works full time out of his single room apartment. Luckily, I live off my computer and I’m not hampered by the other things that get in the way of making my room messy (ex. Collectables, television, posters, excessive amounts of clothing and a girlfriend are all things I don’t let mess up my room). I sweep it every few days, but I barely have to. The room stays clean by me avoiding every dirty thing in the book. There’s no kitchen to cook with here, so I just eat out every day; snacks are kept away from the office (corner of the room with desk and computer) and eaten on the porch.
However, getting that act together with my freelance writing profession isn’t quite that simple. There are so many programs and tasks that can be linked, that I lose track of everything. It’s worse than writing that bad clients project about crayfish mating in the matter that it makes my head want to explode. I have to get together emails, names, writing project details, IM screen names, websites, research material, to-dos, urgent to-dos that need to be done today, payment deals, and then I have to balance my time and personal life into that equation. It’d be hard to say that I’m not left without a headache after my digital cleaning is done.
When’s the best time to start cleaning? When you aren’t doing anything else, and have nothing else to do. Today, the skies have bestowed Bangkok with rain, again; my Internet connection has refused to connect, again; my room, as I mentioned earlier, is the dream-world of boredom. I was planning on working on some of my freelance writing projects, but without the access to proper research materials online, I decided it would be time to get organized.
I filled in a ton of clients to my freelance writing client’s list. Yesterday, I told you about how I use email to get old clients to come back to me. Later today, I will use that list to write a mother load of emails and queue them to be sent when my connection decides it wants to appreciate the 13 dollars I put towards it every month (It’s the only available connection at my apartment).
Today, I also filled in my freelance writing queue Excel spreadsheet, as well. It lists what projects I’m working on, who it’s for, what it’s about, how much I’m getting paid for it, and when I have to finish it. Excel lets you manage this in a simple, customizable fashion. I’ve heard Google has the same type of software available online, but what do you know, I’m not really available to get online today (that’s a problem I see. There are too many freelancers basing their project work online, without ways to back it up offline.
When this was complete, I emptied out the thousands of messages in my inbox, created separate folders for all of my clients’ emails, and sorted them through. This is an excellent way to keep a track of your conversations in a message-by-message format without breaking them with other’s emails.
That took care of most of my digital spring cleaning, and it only took about an hour’s time. I expect it to actually save me a few more hours in the not so far away. With the emails written, I plan to gain a few more projects and make a lot more money within the coming days, and I’ll need it! Tuition for my next term of college is due tomorrow. Hope they accept credit cards!
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