3 Tips to Keeping Your Freelance Calendar Flexible (and Your Head on Straight)

In the comments on my earlier post "5 Tips for Freelancers," reader Stephanie Booth mentioned that she was having trouble setting aside work dates for clients who then cancel on her without having fronted any payment in advance -- leaving her with an empty calendar and too few actual paychecks.

Unfortunate as this type of occurrence is, there's nothing technically wrong with it. If a contract hasn't been signed, and up-front payments haven't been guaranteed, a client is perfectly within her rights to cancel any proposed or pending work. Of course, that doesn't make life any easier for freelancers like Stephanie, who could have allocated those saved dates to other work (or other, paying clients).

In that vein, here are three tips for managing those clients who seem to take up all of your time... without actually paying for it.

Don't Write in Pen What Should Be Written in Pencil

Often, a client will ask if you're free to meet or work on a specific day (or days), which may give you the impression that you have a guaranteed gig. But if your client is simply gauging your availability for possible future projects, or if "something comes up" that derails their intent, that guaranteed gig will often turn out to be nothing more than a suggestion -- and one that doesn't pay.

SOLUTION: Don't commit to any dates that aren't explicitly confirmed by the client. If you use scheduling software like iCal, etc., mark down any dates the client has inquired about with question marks, so you'll know you *may* have a conflict on that day. Then, if another client makes a similar, concrete request for the same day, you can decide if it's worth negotiating a different work date with this definite client or if the earlier possibility of work is more important than the promise of an actual gig. (Hint: It almost never is.)

Confirm All Dates at Least X Days Prior

As a freelancer, it can be difficult to know what you'll be doing tomorrow, much less a week or a month from now. That's why concrete additions to our calendars are so important -- they provide the structure that we base the rest of our surreal work lives around. The earlier you can turn a question mark on the calendar into an exclamation point, the easier it gets to navigate your own life.

SOLUTION: If you have to juggle multiple clients on multiple days, confirm all proposed meetings and work dates X days in advance. (For me, X might be one week; for the less flexible, X might be a month. It all depends on how much stability you need to feel confident in your own workflow.) If a client cannot confirm a proposed date by your cutoff point, politely inform them that you'll do your best to keep it free, but you cannot guarantee that your time won't be requested elsewhere.

As an added bonus, you'll likely find that the clients who can commit earliest to their proposed work dates are often the clients who pay on time, too. (THOSE are the clients you'll want to be most flexible in accommodating, for obvious reasons.)

Insist on Partial Payment Upon Reservation of a Date

If you find yourself assailed by clients who book up your calendar and then cancel all their appointments, your best recourse is to bill your clients as soon as a date is confirmed. Even a nominal fee will remind your clients that your time is worth money, and they shouldn't take either for granted.

SUGGESTION: This type of semi-drastic measure is best covered in a contract between you and your client well in advance of the start of work. If you're unsure whether you'll need to take such a step, include this verbiage in your standard work agreement, but denote that such fees are optional and may be invoked by you only if necessary. (This is a politely-worded warning that abusing your time will eventually lead to expenses.) Also, be sure that both you and your client are in agreement on your definition of terms like "confirmed," so you don't start billing them in a seemingly arbitrary (and indefensible) fashion.

This tip may not be necessary -- or pleasant -- for everyone, but it definitely separates the "talkers" from the "doers." And, in the end, all the talking in the world doesn't get a freelancer paid -- doing does.

NOT Getting Things Done

This week, I've had a mountain of to-dos to do. I'm co-organizing PodCamp Pittsburgh. I'm planning for Season Five of Something to Be Desired. I'm juggling a handful of freelance projects. (And don't get me started on the general disarray my apartment is in.)

So why have I gotten almost NOTHING done this week?

Problem Number One: Badly Scheduled Appointments

On Monday, I had to drive out to my old office -- a good 30 minute drive across town, each way -- to record some audio for one of their projects. I asked if they'd have anything else for me this week, so I could make sure to get everything done in one trip. They asked around the office and, no, there was just one script.

So I came out on Monday morning to record it.

Then they called on Tuesday to say, whoops, there IS another script.

So I drove out on Wednesday to record it.

Then they emailed Wednesday afternoon to say, whoops, there's another script...

Keep in mind, it's actually in my own better financial interest to drive there five days a week, since I charge by the hour -- but, all things being equal, I'd rather lose out on a few bucks and save myself the multiple hourlong round trips -- not to mention actual recording time...

Problem Number Two: One Car, Two People

Life is tricky because Ann and I share one car. As a result, whenever either of us needs to be somewhere, we have to arrange our schedules to be compatible.

On Monday, she had an appointment in the South Side -- so I drove her to work, drove to record the audio, drove back from audio to pick Ann up, drove to the South Side, worked while she had her appointment (yay), drove her BACK to work, drove myself to a cafe (and worked for an hour), and then drove to pick her up at 5.

On Wednesday, Ann won a "free" lunch from a local financial planning office -- sit, listen to a pitch, then eat for free -- so I did pretty much the same thing. Combined work time on Monday and Wednesday? About 4 hours.

On Thursday, Ann has another appointment on the South Side -- at noon -- which means...

Also, keep in mind that Pittsburgh is very much a "driving" town, so neither of us are "bus people." Plus, there's no easy route from where Ann works to where most of her appointments are made.

Normally, all this driving would at least allow me to make phone calls... but a Verizon salesman informed me that there's a new "all cell phones must be used hands-free while driving" law that I was unaware of, which nixes that opportunity...

Problem Number Three: The Heat

It's been about 90 degrees every day this week here in Pittsburgh, and we don't have air conditioning in our apartment. This makes it tough to try and catch up on lost work time at the end of the day because sitting here is so uncomfortable. I'm sweating as I type this -- at 1 AM -- and all I can think of is getting some sleep to escape the heat.

The Solution?

I'm still working that part out. Short of breaking my to-do list down into hundreds of mini-tasks, each completable in under 2 minutes -- and buying a headset for my phone -- I'm coming up short.

Any ideas?

Lifehack Overlap

Here's a great way to "make time" when it seems like you have too much to do at once: overlap.

Since most of us tend to be involved in 20 different projects at once, it stands to reason that there's a good amount of overlap among these projects -- same people, same topics, same resources.

Is there a way you can combine seemingly disparate tasks to accomplish multiple goals at once?

For example: while answering an email just now, I realized I was imparting the same information I'll cover during a presentation I'm giving later this summer. So I copy-and-pasted that email into a new document before sending. Now the emailer has the answers he needs, and I have the outline and talking points for a 40 minute presentation -- AND a blog post! Check, check and check!

The answer isn't always improving the ORDER of how we work -- it's improving the FLOW. And flow almost always means overlap.

How can YOU combine tasks in a new way today?

How Do You SEE Time?

Everyone has 24 hours in their day. But not everyone divides those 24 hours the same way.

For some actions, an hour is sufficient. Others may take minutes, while still others take all day.

But if you begin to understand WHEN you're most productive, and what time of day you're best suited for certain tasks, you may also find an unusual stumbling block: instead of not having ENOUGH time, you may not have the right KIND of time.

Hickory Dickory Dock

I like to start actions at the top of the hour. Whether it's a meeting, a class, a lunch break or a load of freelance work, starting a new action at the top of the hour makes me feel as though I have a long stretch of time to work uninterrupted. In fact, I'm so keen on the top of the hour that I've trained my brain to see this part of every 60-minute cycle as an optimal time of day.

Conversely, starting an action at the bottom of an hour, or anywhere else in-between, agitates me.

The same work that I can dive into with abandon at 3 PM becomes a case of the blahs if I get started at 3:10. Somehow, my mind has already begun to write off this hour as being underproductive. Already, my brain aches for 4 PM, to get a "fresh start."

This explains why I prefer to round up to the nearest full hour whenever I take naps, if possible.

Eight Days a Week

My preference for the top of the hour extends to the calendar week as well. Mondays are huge days for my mental success. If I can get a jump on the week on Monday, if I can execute my list of things to do for that day -- or, heavens be praised, work ahead -- then it's smooth sailing the rest of the week. Even if I dawdle by Thursday, my brain assesses the week as a positive because of the strong start.

Meanwhile, if I stumble on Monday and don't get to the meat of the workweek until Tuesday, the entire week feels like a wash. I could actually be twice as productive as I would be in the previous week's example, but my brain would register it as a failure because I was always working to catch up.

The Solution

I doubt I'm alone in this chronal oddity. Everyone has their own idiosyncracies in life, and their perception of time should be no exception. (If that were the case, I doubt David Allen would be making millions off the Getting Things Done movement, which is proof that none of us has a mastery of his or her own time.)

One of the ways I combat this mental attrition is to schedule my workday in a consistent manner:

- Start a new action at the top of each hour, when applicable.
- If that action is done early, find a similar action to take next, so it feels as though I'm working on a related arm of the same project
- Try to squeeze showers, naps and lunch into the timeframe when my computer is busy doing something else (capturing video, awaiting email feedback, etc.), so I don't derail productive time and end up with a handful of stray minutes... like, say, 55 of them...

Of course, no approach is foolproof. Every day, precious hours are sliced into sections due to previous engagements, transportation woes and other exterior obligations that disrupt my ideal timeframe. Instead of a full hour to complete a mid-sized task, or 4+ hours to devote to something major, I often find myself with 28 minutes here, 90 minutes there.

So the next-best solution is to identify tasks I can knock out in lesser amounts of time and still feel productive. Is there a blog post I can write in 20 minutes? Are there pending emails I should be responding to that would only take 10 minutes? Does something in the apartment need to be cleaned and reorganized in the next 45?

Now that I'm coming to grips with HOW I see time, I can better schedule my necessary actions to better fit within all the fractured hours my day provides.

How do YOU see time? How does that impact YOUR workflow?