Five Ways to Get More Done

Jane Friedman's post on getting more done is a great read as you figure out your priorities and goals for the coming year. While her blog is aimed at fiction writers, her advice is sound for writers of all stripes.

Her five tips:
1. Decide what you'll stop doing.
2. Pay something to do stuff you don't like doing or don't need to learn.
3. Say goodbye to guilt and obligation.
4. Be good at what you do.
5. Spend the most time on what matters most to you.

As I plan my goals (professional, personal, and family-related) for the coming year, I'll be keeping these five strategies in mind. I suggest you do too.

The Best Time Management Tip Ever

In addition to writing, I do a lot of public speaking on topics ranging from healthy habits to stress management to time management and goal-setting. Managing my time as efficiently as I can helps me make a fulltime living while putting in part-time hours, so I'm always looking for time-saving measures like working when I'm not really working.

In the world of time management, there are two basic schools of thought when it comes to what you should do first each day. One school says to prioritize your tasks, and do the most important task first, then the second most important, and so on. The other school suggests starting with something relatively easy to do; by checking off the first thing on your to-do list, you build momentum for the rest of the day.

I say both are wrong. As I shared at my speech on 10 ways to thrive as a freelancer today at CWIP, the first thing you should do is eliminate the ugliest. In other words, do the thing that you most do not want to do first.

There are several compelling reasons why. First, when you start your morning with the worst thing you must do (whether it's writing the draft of a complicated article, finally revising a book chapter, or calling an editor to request some contract changes), your day can only get better, right?

Second, when you have something you don't want to do and you don't do it right away, you spend a good part of your workday coming up with compelling (and increasingly more creative) reasons why you cannot do that thing right now. You promise yourself you'll do it after you have some coffee. No, you'll do it before lunch. Wait, your blood sugar is flagging--you'll do it after lunch. Then you put it off until 3 p.m.--and nothing gets done at 3 p.m. Eventually you run out of steam, and you run out of work time, and you promise yourself you'll do the dreaded task--tomorrow.

Here's the thing. First off, the dreaded thing did not get done! That's bad enough. But second, consider how much time and mental energy you wasted throughout your day, coming up with excuses (oops, I mean reasons) why you couldn't do it right at that moment. That's not only a waste of time, it's a drain on your emotional energy and leeches your productivity.

That's why I end every work day identifying the thing I most do not want to do the next morning--and start every work day tackling that task. Eliminate the ugliest, whatever your personal "ugly" thing may be, and watch your productivity climb.

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How else do I make the most of my time? By specializing. If you're a new to freelancing, check out Ready, Aim, Specialize! Create your own Writing Specialty and Make More Money (Kindle edition). You'll find 20 queries that sold, advice from more than 50 successful freelancers, and hundreds of resources to help you break into 10 lucrative nonfiction writing specialties.

Counting the Minutes: Why you Should Track your Time

Your biggest asset as a writer is your time, but most freelancers have no idea of how they spend theirs. And if you don't know how you're spending your time, you don't know what your average hourly rate is, which is a strong indicator of your productivity.

Consider this: you accept an assignment that pays $500. Say you spend 10 hours researching and writing it. You make $50/hour on that piece. But if you wind up spending 20 hours researching the story and another 15 writing it, you’re making less than $15/hour!

That’s why I suggest newer freelancers create a timesheet for each of their assignments. Each time you work on the piece, make an entry on it, like so:

Assignment: IGA profile ($600/1200 words, due April 20)

Date/Task/Time (in hours)

April 4/Background research/1.5
April 6/Research & arrange interview/1.0
April 9/Interview & transcribe notes/1.75
April 12/Draft story/2.0
April 14/Revise draft/0.75
April 15/Proof & turn in/ 1.0

My timesheet reveals that I spent 8 hours on this relatively simple one-source piece. That means I made $75/hour—not bad. If I have to revise the piece, I’ll add the time on, which brings my overall rate down. (If I had pitched this idea, I’d include query-writing time as well as that is part of the "cost" of the assignment.)

Use this method to track your writing time. (Software like Traxtime makes it even easier.) You'll soon discover which assignments are most lucrative—and which take more time than they're worth.

The Money Test: Say Yes--or Not?

When I started freelancing 14+ years ago, I said "yes, please!" (think Austin Powers) to any paying work that came my way. I was trying to make money. My financial goal my first year was to make...wait for it...$10,000. I have no idea why I chose that number, other than it was a nice, neat one and seemed realistic for someone launching a freelance business with no connections, no experience, and no clue.

However, having a financial goal (even a small one) made me focused on money and it meant that every assignment I took that first year had to pay something--even if it was just $25 or $35 for a short piece for the local paper. Even the "small stuff" did move me toward making my income goal that first year. and I actually made more than $17,000 my first year of freelancing.

Today I can't say yes to everything, or even most things. And over time, I've developed a four-part test I use when I decide whether to take on work:

1. How much money does it pay? (If you're freelancing to make a living, or at least make some green, this is obvious.)

2. Less obvious--how much time will it take? I've found that the work I've done for national magazines takes far more time (including the pitching and follow-ups) than the work I do for smaller publications. Yes, the big magazines pay more, but I'm always looking at my hourly rate, not just the size of the check. And sometimes the magazines that pay less per word, actually pay more per hour.)

3. What's the PIA factor? My regular readers know that PIA is my shorthand for "Pain In the..." Some clients and editors are just...annoying. I'm thinking of an editor I work with who takes forever to respond to queries, then assigns stuff with ridiculously tight deadlines. I love her, but there's definintely a PIA factor to working with her. And if that PIA factor on a particular project is high, I'm either going to get more money...or I might even walk away.

4. Will this work further my career--and if so, how? So, for example, when I wrote my first book, Ready, Aim, Specialize, I received an advance of $2,500. And I interviewed 56 people for it! Looking at my hourly rate, I made more as a teenaged lifeguard. But I wanted to start writing books, and I had to begin somewhere. So I said yes to the book, added "author" to my CV, and even made royalties from it. My first book led to many others, which made the first deal worth it.

What about you? How do you decide to take on work? Is it just about the money or do you consider other factors as well?

The 80/20 Rule

Ever heard of the 80/20 rule? It’s an old business axiom that says that 80 percent of your work will come from 20 percent of your customers. I’ve found it’s true for freelancing, and it’s one of the reasons I focus on developing relationships with editors and other clients. Just as I don’t want to write about a topic only once (instead, I reslant the idea to maximize my time and research), I don’t want to work for a client only once. That's a waste of my time.

Here’s the thing. First off, it’s much easier to get work from an editor you’ve worked with before (assuming you did a good job, of course.) Case in point: I recently sent four story ideas in an email to an editor I write for regularly. Each was just three or four sentences, a far cry from the page-long, heavily researched query I’d send to a new market. She emailed me back the next day, assigning all four ideas. Marketing time for all four assignments? Virtually nil.

Second, you’re more likely to get more money because editors often pay their regular contributors a higher rate than “one-shot” writers. I know I get a higher per-word rate from many of my markets because I’ve already proven myself—and my editors know that I can be counted on in a crisis. (I’ve turned around a feature in three days to help out an editor who had another freelancer flake out.) That makes me more valuable than "Writer X," or someone new (i.e. unproven) to the editor.

Third, when you build a relationship with an editor, he or she will often come to you with ideas, which saves you time having to query. In my fantasy life, I’d never have to pitch again; I’d just sit back, accept assignments, and write. (Hmm, my fantasy life is rather lame, isn’t it? But I digress.) And it’s not just editors who come back to you—a client I ghostwrote a book for several years ago hired me last fall to ghostwrite an article for him for a trade publication. I love work that drops into my lap like that.

Finally, clients who know you and know your capabilities are happy to pass your name along. That same ghostwriting client recommended me to a friend of his looking for an editor for his book last summer, and that led to a lucrative and fun project for me. Another editor at a custom magazine gave my name to one of her colleagues and that led to more work. If I can get my clients doing my marketing for me, I have to do less of it myself. Bonus!

So how you turn your one-shot clients into steady ones? Stay tuned...that will be my next post.

How to Fail in your New Freelance Business

Here’s what no one tells you about starting a freelance business. At the onset--and for some time thereafter--you're going to spend the majority of your time marketing, whether that means researching and writing query letters, making cold calls to potential corporate clients, sending LOIs (letters of introduction) to trade or specialty magazines, and/or contacting book packagers or other potential ghostwriting clients. And that marketing time never pays off…unless it turns into assignments.

Hey, I don't want to have to market myself. I’d be a happy little clam if I never had to write another query, LOI, or book proposal. I’d just sit at my desk (better yet, play basketball outside with my son) and field offers of work on my Iphone. And some work does come to me…a lot, actually. But even today, the majority of my work still comes as a result of me selling me, and marketing my business to potential clients. It's time I have to put in to remain busy and successful.

What about you? Remember that marketing yourself is only one aspect of your business that doesn’t produce income. There’s also business management tasks like sending invoices, following up on late payments, filing, organizing giant piles of papers on your desk (maybe that's just me), tracking expenses, keeping up on email, doing online networking (like this blog), replacing office supplies, you name it. My point is that when you launch a freelance career, only a small percentage of your time will be actually writing for money, so you need to market yourself as efficiently as possible.

My first six months of my writing career, my time broke down like this:

Marketing (including research, writing queries, cold calls) 75–90 %
Writing for pay (including research/interviews/writing) 10–20 %
Business management tasks 5–10%

Get the idea? The vast majority of my time was spent marketing, but once I started getting assignments and developing regular clients, that percentage started to drop as the percentage of time I spent writing for money went up.

Within 18 months, I had a handful of steady clients, which significantly reduced the amount of time I spent looking for new markets and researching and writing queries. Plus, my queries were more likely to result in sales. All good news.

Now my time broke down like this:

Marketing (including research, writing queries, cold calls) 10–20%
Writing for pay (including research/interviews/writing) 60–80%
Business management tasks 5–10%
Speaking/teaching 5–10%

If your marketing never results in assignments, or doesn’t result in enough assignments, your freelance writing business will tank before it ever gets going. That’s why you have to make the most of your marketing time—and next post I’ll talk about how to write queries that will boost your chance of getting paying work.

One idea=one story? Wrong!

As a freelancer, you have a limited number of hours to dedicate to earning money from your work, whether you’re writing part- or full-time. That’s why I make the most of mine by squeezing as much as I can out of my research—by selling “reslants” to other markets. I never write about an idea only once. I'm always looking to cover it again for another magazine.

Reslanting is writing about the same topic more than once, with a different angle, for a new market. And it’s a way to work much more efficiently, boosting your hourly rate.

It took me several years to grasp this fact, though. When I first launched my career, I dug for story ideas, looked for appropriate markets, and queried magazines. When I got an assignment, I wrote the article. Then it was on to the next idea, the next market, the next story.

I wrote about topics ranging from how avoiding employment discrimination claims to memory improvement techniques to animal dissection alternatives to religious weight loss programs. Each story took a considerable amount of time to research, but once I was finished with it, I never revisited the topic. Not smart.

Does that sound like how you work? Then break yourself of the one idea=one story habit right now. Instead, start thinking about the different ways you can reslant material to different markets. That lets you take advantage of the information that’s already in your head, in your interview transcripts, and on your hard drive, reducing the amount of time you spend researching and writing your next piece. Sure, you may do additional interviews, but the lion’s share of the work (wrapping your brain around a new subject) has already been completed.

Not sure how to do it? Put your brainstorming hat on. You pitched a specific angle on a particular topic to one market. You wrote the piece--or you're writing it now. Don't stop there. Think about the different angles you can take with the subject, and which markets might be interested in them.

For example, last year I was assigned a piece on the health benefits of gratitude for a custom magazine. (I'd never written about gratitude before, though I am the mistress of thank-you notes.) Using the same basic research and one additional interview, I wrote a piece on helping your kids become more grateful for a major newspaper. Then I wrote a piece on surprising ways to be happy (including becoming more grateful) for a woman’s magazine. Get the idea? The idea—gratitude is good for you—was the same, but by coming up with different slants and markets, I sold three stories based on the idea. And I’m still pitching related stories now.

So break free from the concept that one idea=one story for one market. Instead, think one idea=multiple angles, multiple stories, multiple markets, multiple checks. Reslanting lets you cover a subject more than once, and each subsequent story takes less time to research and write than a wholly original idea. Bottom line is that you're making making more money…in less time.