My Freelance Writing Worksheet
When I look back at the first few months of my freelance writing career, one detail still makes me wonder: why did I try to memorize the projects that I had to complete every day? Instead of writing my work down, I would simply try to remember what I had to do, and then use my email system as a bit of assistance. Simply put, I would never try this now. I have used another system for staying organized with my daily work, and it has been quite effective to say the least.
What does my system look like? In today’s day and age of technology, you are probably expecting me to use some sort of software to track my jobs and workload. But actually, the exact opposite is true. I use a simple post-it-note to keep track of the work that I need to complete.
My “freelance writing worksheet†consists of three columns; always in the same order working from left to right.
In the far left column, I include the jobs that I absolutely have to complete on a given day. I do not move onto any other projects until these jobs have a line through them.
The middle column consists of blog related work. This includes everything from writing new posts to changing ad placement and much more. If it has to do with any of my blogs, the task is put in the middle column.
On the far right I keep long term tasks. For instance, I have a reminder to renew some online subscriptions within the next few months. The reason that I keep this column is simple. Since they are all based on the long term, I know that if they are not on paper I could very well forget about them. And obviously, that would not be a good thing.
At the end of each day, I do two things. First off, I write my new worksheet for the following day. I base this off of the prior day’s notes, as well as any emails that I have in my “Jobs Due†folder. After that, I throw out the current day’s post-it-note that has been marked up.
Do yourself a favor and write down all of the work that you have to complete. This will help to ensure that you never miss a deadline.Â
