We’ve all had situations where we’ve taken in work and hoped for the best. Time debt impacts all of us. We are stifled with the amount of time we must spend on projects that it impacts bandwidth and throughput in a big way. Time debt creates anxiety–what are you doing and why. When you take a man’s money, you owe him some work. Time debt is, generally speaking, better than cash debt, but it can take on a life of its own and create distractions and cause people you harm.
Time overhead is different. Freelancers should be taking retainer clients regularly. We stabilize our income some by having retainer gigs that last a while. We work with people & put the payment on autopay through paypal recurring pamyents/subscribe buttons. This is a good thing. But this creates an obligation for us to honor, some time that we have to allocate each month/week to honor the financial commitment our clients made to us. To much time overhead and we don’t have the bandwidth to take on new projects.
How do you manage each?
Me? I’m an old school GTD’er. I have a whiteboard. I put all the projects I’m working on on the white board and how much time I estimate they will take me. I am pretty close on this stuff, I estimate high and that covers me for the outliers; if I have 4 deliverables in a week what I’ll do is estimate X hours per + 25 or one hour, whichever is more. One of the 4 generally consumes all of the overage. On Monday, I pick the projects that will be 100% done (generally ones I’m in control of).
- Project 1: 4 hours = 6 hours
- Project 2: 3 hours = 4 hours
- Project 3: 6 hours = 8 hours
- Project 4: 2 hours = 3 hours:
Then I add my time debt: 21 hours. That’ what I owe people in Chris Johnson brain time for money I’ve collected. I take the smallest project and get it 100% done before I start on the next smallest one. You feel less opressed with 3 projects than you do with 4 projects. I take then the next smallest and leave the biggest for last–though I suppose there’s no harm in doing them in whatever order you like, and I suppose you might get a rush of productivity by having gotten the ‘hard one’ off your plate.
As far as time overhead goes, I handle that a little differently. I write down all of my retainer clients on a spreadsheet. I write down the weekly time commitment that I’m aloting. Some clients (Monday tech coaching folks) have a regular commitment. Some clients (general pop) have stuff I do for them each month (writing metadescriptions is a real easy gig for freelancers to get for small business bloggers). I figure out where I’m gonna meet it and try to do everything by Wednesdays, preferably on Monday. Having a busy monday sets the tone for a good week.
Being cognizant of this stuff is most of the work you need to be productive and not panicked. Knowing what you’ve committed to each week, and currently can help liberate you from the massive issues that you have.
All of the accounting that I started doing a while ago is helping me see what my business is, where my revenue comes from and what’s efficient and what’s not. It’s helping me to move everything in the right direction and manage what’s now/what’s next better.
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I like this system a lot. The time debt vs. time overhead is a good distinction to keep in mind. And the idea of “smallest job first” is one I really like.
A long time ago when I worked in Corporate America a CPA told me a similar type of method. We were cranking out hundreds of tax returns. “Closest to the mailbox” was his rule. Which tax return can you get into the mailbox first? Do that one first, he said. Same reason — the list got smaller and we all felt like we were floating a little higher in the water.
You manage your time well Chris. One key ingredient to your schedule (to anyone’s schedule) is staying self-motivated to stay on top of things.