Milking Every Minute of a 24-Hour Day

I wrote previously about how I use a spreadsheet to organize my projects, schedule my work and track my income. I told you there was another way to manage everything, too.

Before I get into it, please allow me to pontificate for a pair of paragraphs about productivity. (Sorry about the alliteration, but remember, I’m getting paid by the word here.)

As freelance writers, our incomes depend on how much content we can produce and sell. If we want to earn more, we have two basic options: write more or charge more.

Unfortunately, both courses of action have their restrictions. We can only spend so many hours a day at the keyboard. And our prices are a function of how much clients are willing to pay and what our competitors are charging for their work. So what’s a poor blogger to do?

Outsource!

Yep, that’s the other single-word way to handle absolutely everything related to freelancing and time management. Get yourself a personal assistant.

That’s exactly what my client at AlfaBlue did before launching this web site. He hired a lady on another continent to look after all his writers, sending out RFPs, giving out assignments, receiving submissions and making payments. She keeps his records and interfaces with vendors, too. She even erases the spam from his email accounts.

For you as a freelance writer, a personal assistant can take care of all the mundane non-productive activities that eat up much of your day. Let her, or him, fill-in your schedule, organize your correspondence, manage your financial transactions and even seek out new clients. You just stick to what puts money in your pocket—writing.

And it gets better. If your personal assistant is based half way around the globe, all the non-productive tasks get taken care of while you sleep. You wake up in the morning to a tidy work environment, with the day’s writing priorities assigned and the bills paid. How cool is that?

I don’t have a personal assistant … yet. But I have used outsourcing before, and I know exactly when to get one. All it will take is one major new long-term opportunity I can’t handle without creating more time for writing. Then, I’ll outsource to a location where the cost is low so that I can concentrate on what I do best, turning words into money. Ka-ching!

T.A.J.