Scott Oldford Site

Tag: increase productivity

  • 5 Reasons Why All Freelance Writers Need a Daily Routine

    5 Reasons Why All Freelance Writers Need a Daily Routine

    I love reading about other writers’ routines: Ernest Hemingway wrote at dawn, Maya Angelou wrote out of a hotel room, Alice Munro writes for three hours and walks for three miles.

    Freelancers also need routines — and because we have multiple demands on our time besides writing, we need our routines to be a little more specific than, to quote Hemingway, “write every morning as soon after first light as possible.”

    When are you going to check email? When are you going to pitch? When are you going to silence your phone and work on your next assignment? If you have multiple assignments to complete, how much time will you assign to each one?

    I’ve been a full-time freelance writer for six years, and having a daily routine — one that includes time for writing, rewriting, pitching and administrative work — has been one of the secrets of my success.

    In fact, I’m pretty sure my routine has helped me earn more money. Here’s how.

    1. A routine structures your day

    One of the hardest parts of being a freelance writer is having to create your own structure.

    If you don’t make time to send out pitches, you won’t book any work. If you don’t make time to complete the work, you won’t earn any money. If you don’t take time to do all of the administrative work associated with freelancing — following up with clients, keeping track of business expenses, maintaining a website — you won’t grow your career.

    Turning my day into a daily routine helped me make time for all of the work that freelancing requires — and it also helped me avoid the decision fatigue that comes with asking yourself “what am I going to do today?” over and over again. I already know: I’m going to check the news, I’m going to check my email, I’m going to check social media and then I’m going to write for an hour. Knowing what you’re going to do every day helps you get it done.

    2. A routine prevents procrastination

    If you start writing every day at 9:30 a.m. (or at dawn, if you’re like Hemingway), you’ll get used to spending that time writing. You’ll be less tempted to spend it doing laundry or refreshing Twitter, because your mind and body already know that it’s writing time.

    Building a routine is a great procrastination-buster, because you’ll be able to schedule time for social media and afternoon snacks and anything else you usually do instead of doing your work. If you spend a lot of time reading sites like The Write Life, for example, add 30 minutes of “reading time” into your routine — and then when “writing time” comes around again, you’ll be ready.

    If you don’t have a daily routine for your freelance writing, it could be costing you money.

    3. A routine keeps you balanced

    I start every day with 45 minutes of yoga. I also take two 30-minute walk breaks: one after lunch, and one and at the end of my workday. (Alice Munro isn’t the only writer who loves long walks.)

    These breaks are non-negotiable; I don’t have to “earn” them, but I don’t get to turn them into extra writing time, either.

    Building yoga and walking into my routine helps me stay balanced. It also helps me feel like I’m able to handle multiple priorities: the work I owe my clients, and the breaks I owe myself. Most of us have multiple priorities, whether we’re balancing work/life, writing/family, or freelancing/day job. (Or all of the above!) Make sure your routine includes time for all of your priorities — otherwise, you risk burning out.

    4. A routine sets limits

    If your day includes 30 minutes of morning email, a writing block from 9:30 to noon, an hour for lunch, an administrative hour, and then a writing block from 2 to 5, you know you can only schedule as much writing as can be completed in those two blocks. Freelancers often have trouble knowing when to say no—an extra assignment, even if it’s a bad one, can bring in a few extra dollars, right?

    Once you have a routine, you’ll know exactly how many writing hours you have per week — and once you know how long it takes you to complete a typical assignment, you’ll have a good idea of how many assignments you can accept. These types of limits help keep your freelance work from taking over your entire life.

    5. A routine requires you to maximize your time — and your income

    So you’ve built your routine, you have your daily writing blocks, and you know roughly how much work you can complete in a week. There’s one more step in the process: Maximizing your time by working for the highest possible rates.

    This might mean using your administrative time to pitch higher-paying clients. It might mean re-negotiating rates with your current clients. It might even mean firing your lowest-paying client to make space for a better one.

    Whatever you choose to do, let your routine be your guide. You know how much time you have available to write, so don’t sell yourself short — literally. Set your writing blocks, stick to them, and make sure you’re earning as much as possible. Then get ready to do the whole thing again tomorrow.

    Do you have a daily routine? Has it helped you avoid procrastination, balance multiple priorities and earn more money?

  • 3 Ways to Be More Productive When You Sit Down to Write

    3 Ways to Be More Productive When You Sit Down to Write

    When I started freelancing back in 2010, all I knew was that making money online as a writer and editor was possible, and I’d be able to figure it out along the way.

    While I certainly had my share of challenges (and a few awesome resources like The Write Life to help me out), I did have one thing going for me: A journalism degree. Because of my journalism coursework, I knew how to write well and quickly.

    Knowing how to “write fast” makes a huge difference in your ability to earn more income. As a writer, you don’t get paid for your ideas; you get paid for the content you produce.

    If you can become more efficient at the actual craft of writing, you’ll be able to produce more in the same amount of time, which means you’ve got the potential to earn more.

    So how can you become the blazing-fast writer with the healthier bottom line?

    1. Learn to touch type

    The average person can type 36 words per minute (WPM) on a regular keyboard. The average person who can touch type — type without looking at the letters on the keyboard — can do an average 58 WPM. That’s nearly twice as fast!

    Here’s the thing: It’s not unthinkable that you could double the touch-type average. On a slow day, my typing speed is 112 WPM. Getting words from my head through my fingers and onto the screen is no longer a limiting factor in my productivity.

    In fact, it’s not that uncommon for me to write 1,000 words in 20 minutes or less when I’m familiar with the subject matter.

    Just think about what your effective hourly rate would be if you could charge a flat fee for each of two or three 1,000-word posts that took you an hour in total to write.

    Take the free typing test at TypingTest.com and find out how you stack up. Then, look for opportunities to increase your typing speed. Free training is available online, including at the test website.

    When you’re away from your keyboard, use any mental down-time — like when you’re sitting at a traffic light, waiting in line, or stuck in a meeting — to practice typing. Song lyrics, snippets of conversations (real or imagined), even your mental to-do list can be discretely tapped out on an imaginary keyboard, or invisibly “typed” in your mind.

    2. Use outlines

    Outlines are hands-down one of my most important productivity tools. They’re taught in English class for a reason: Developing an outline is a tremendously efficient way to write.

    Even though it might seem like it’s a waste of time, making an outline sets you up to write incredibly more quickly when the time comes.

    Even if you’re just jotting down three bullet points on a topic you know well, having an outline will save you all kinds of time when you’re doing the actual writing.

    Think about it: How long would it take you to come up with a 900-word blog post if you had to sit down and type it from the beginning, without making any notes to yourself? Maybe an hour?

    Now imagine how long it would take you to sit down and write 900 words if you already had a two-sentence overview and three bullet points with one or two sentences to explain or expand each one. Much faster, right?

    Once you’ve drafted an outline, you already know what you’re going to write about and you’re already pretty familiar with the subject matter because you’ve already researched it (or you specialize in that niche).

    You’ve effectively set yourself up to blaze through the assignment.

    The time it takes to sketch out an outline plus the time it takes to write it up is almost always less time than if you’d sat down and written the whole thing from scratch.

    3. Leave clues for yourself

    Many of us go into freelancing for the flexibility. Flexibility is great — it’s one of the biggest perks of being a freelance writer — but it also comes with the understanding that you won’t necessarily have six to eight uninterrupted hours for working each day.

    The trouble is, interruptions and irregular working hours can completely kill your productivity if you don’t handle them properly.

    The way I deal with my on-again, off-again work schedule is to leave myself clues when I leave my keyboard.

    If I’m wrapping up for the day, I jot down the first two or three things I need to do when I get back to work. If I’m leaving an outline unfinished, I’ll make notes at the bottom of the document about what I need to research next. If I’m in the middle of typing up an article, I don’t need to do anything because I’ve got my outline to tell me where to pick up.

    Whether it’s a comment in a Google Doc, a short “do this next” list, or highlights on the scratch pad where you brainstorm, plan your next steps before stepping away from any task.

    Do it while you’re already in the thick of the project, while the next steps are pretty obvious.

    Then, when you come back to work, you won’t waste time getting reacquainted and then figuring out what to do next. You already figured it out for yourself!

    What’s your favorite strategy for being more efficient as a writer?