My 15 Favorite Freelance Hacks
I’m a big fan of Nicole McLaughlin, the host of AllRecipes YouTube videos that show home cooks how to do less work and still get the same delicious results.
One of McLaughlin’s recent videos, “20 Lazy Kitchen Hacks You Need to Know (Nicole’s Best Tips & Tricks)” inspired me to think about the freelance hacks I’ve developed over the years. These are practices or habits that are fairly simple to adopt and have made my life as an independent writer easier and more stress free.
Here are 15 of my favorites, with explanations of why I use them and why they work:
1. Make daily and long-term to-do lists.
Paper, online calendar, app. What you use isn’t as important as getting the stuff you need to do out of your head and into written form. I keep lists for the day, weekend, and long-term work and non-work projects.
2. Put everything on the calendar.
Deadlines, meetings, interviews, events, tax deadlines, LOI campaigns, out-of-office days—everything goes on the calendar. As with to-do lists, the type is incidental to how you use it. I’m a long-time Outlook fan but know people who swear by daily planners, kitchen whiteboards, Google Calendar, even hand-drawn grids. If you’re building your work schedule around your life (more on that below), all work and non-work obligations need to show up in the same place so you see total hours you can devote to writing and writing-related activities, which helps determine your goal hourly rate.
3. Track your hours.
Even if you charge by the word or project, you need to know roughly how long it takes to produce certain types of work in order to determine what to charge. If you’ve written 25 articles of 1,000 to 1,250 words on a specific topic or beat, and each one included three or four interviews, a first draft and one round of revisions, and took 10 to 20 hours to complete, you can multiply the average by your goal hourly rate to come up with a quote for the same kind of work. Read more about how to set your hourly rate and how to earn more per hour without raising your rates.
4. Track income to anticipate work dips.
Track income to see if business picks up or slows down during certain times of the year, which could vary depending on the type of writing you do. If certain weeks or months are slow, it could be a good time to take time off (if possible) or work on a personal project. Analyzing monthly or quarterly billings also helps plan for estimated quarterly taxes, savings, and spending.
5. Work on the hardest thing when you’re freshest or “on.”
And do busy work when you’re not. When I took a recent New York Times quiz, “What’s Your Sleep Type?” I wasn’t surprised to learn I’m a robin, not the earliest riser, but close to it (unlike Source of Sources founder Peter Shankman who’s a famously extremely early riser and has written about it extensively). Because I’m most alert from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, I try to schedule work that requires the most concentration during that time.
6. Take a nap.
There’s a reason I have a couch in my office. I start dragging around 3:30 or 4 p.m., but a 30- or 40-minute nap is sufficient to fuel another hour or two of work after. Afternoon naps are easier now than in my carpool-driving working mom years. But even then, I could squeeze in a quick one waiting in the car at dance or Tae kwon do practice. That was enough to get me through dinner, homework, and back at the computer after bedtime if I had something to finish.
7. Leave notes to your future self.
I leave notes to myself at the top of a file outlining next steps or info I’m waiting for other people to provide. This is especially helpful when I’m juggling multiple projects, or if I’m ghostwriting something and might not get feedback from the author(s) for days or weeks. Writing things down for my future self means I don’t to store that information in short-term memory (aka my head—notice the theme?). It makes it less likely I’ll forget something, and less likely I’ll wake up in the middle of the night freaked out about what I have to do the next day.
8. If you have to flag a problem, offer a solution.
If you hit a snag on a project and have to contact an editor or client, include possible solutions. Including solutions when you bring up a problem saves the other person time and can make you look good. I lead with the one I prefer and why.
9. Use templates, macros, and AI to standardize regular tasks.
Have a template for prospective clients to fill out. Before I agree to a call, I ask prospective ghostwriting clients to fill out a brief questionnaire about their project, goals, timeframe, and anticipated budget. Answers weed out serious prospects from the not-so serious.
10. Create agendas for meetings and calls.
Send an agenda in advance of a Zoom or phone call. It doesn’t need to include every detail, but gives people time to think about the issues, and keeps meetings on track.
11. Use AI transcription and summary for calls.
If you use Zoom, Teams, or a similar online meeting app for client calls or interviews, use the AI function to record calls and generate a transcript or call summary–and if your client hosts calls, ask them to do this for you. If you’re working on a project and go over next steps at the end of the call, the AI summary will capture the information, which you then can add to your calendar. Read more about AI transcription tools here.
12. Use Worldtimebuddy to schedule meetings and calls.
I do a lot of ghostwriting that involves collaborating with authors in different time zones. I use the Worldtimebuddy web-based app to quickly figure out times of day that would work for a call between me here in Portland, Oregon, and authors in Chicago, Helsinki, Singapore, or Melbourne.
13. Have a standard contract.
If a new or prospective client doesn’t have a contract, you can set the tone by using yours instead of something they or their legal department come up with that could include more onerous terms. Read more about negotiating contracts and see ASJA contract resources here.
14. Organize your work around your life.
If you want a life, you have to build work around it, not the other way around. Schedule holidays, vacations, volunteer work, family-related activities or caregiving, medical appointments, etc., and refuse to let work bleed into it.
15. Plan ahead.
In case it’s not obvious by now, I’m a major planner. More planning means less things to decide or even think about in the course of what can turn into a crazy busy work day. On Sundays, I pick out everything I’m going to wear that week, and lay out the next day’s clothes the night before–just like Jodie Foster. I plan menus for the coming week Saturday mornings, a practice I adopted when our kids were still at home and have continued to follow. I plan workouts a month in advance thanks to this online trainer. It might sound obsessive, but I like to think I take after my late Dad, whose life motto was “Plan your work and work your plan.”
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Michelle Rafter is a Portland, Oregon, writer, editor, and writing coach. An ASJA member since 2010, she currently serves on the ASJA board, is the organization’s publications committee chair, and represents ASJA on the organizing committee for the Andy Awards for excellence in collaborative writing. See her LinkedIn profile here.