Figart Consulting » Self-Employment

Clock It with ClockingIT

admin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:09:05 +0000

Do you need to keep track of your time?

Do you need project management software?

Do you like it when it’s free?

Okay, silly question. We don’t like to pay for stuff when we don’t have to.

Well, I have a program for you that you might like. I’ve been using this one myself for over a year and couldn’t be more pleased. It’s called Clocking IT and is designed with the IT professional in mind. That said, I use it for an awful lot of writing and document design project where I’m being paid by time spent rather than by project.

It works like most project management software. You can have multiple clients and projects, a discussion group for any project that you choose to make collaborative, and you can have multiple users for each company account. There is a Gantt chart option to ensure appropriate allocation of time and resources, and the reporting methods are both powerful and flexible.

The program is web-based, but you can enter time spent offline into the database quite easily.[1]

I find it useful not only to track how much time I’m spending on clients, but also to make sure that I’m dedicating enough of my time to marketing and development projects. Since I do also collaborate with other people, I sometimes give them user accounts with my company to ensure that we’re on track with whatever project we’re working on.

All in all, for the small business, this is a very cool program and the price can’t be beat!

[1] Which I actually did for about ten hours on a train trip up the East Coast last year!

Gorilla Client

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:13:42 +0000

When you’re a freelancer and get a really big client, probably the first thing you do is cheer. Money! Lots of work! You can slack off marketing for awhile, wheeee!!!!!

If that client is now providing more than about 20% of your business, stop cheering right now and start panicking. No, seriously.

There’s an expression for this sort of client – the Gorilla Client. Sure, that big client seems great, and yes, big projects with lots of work/pay really are. But like having a big, powerful gorilla in your office, it can be a problem that becomes bigger and stronger than you are. Any problem with that client is now a potential threat to your entire business. You’ll find yourself structuring your business around the needs of that single client. You’ll find yourself tempted to leave off working for other clients and concentrate on that one[1]. Sure, you want to provide good service. Good service should be at the heart of your business. But you do not want to rise and fall at the whim of a single client.

So, why do we accept Gorilla Clients? It’s mostly laziness and greed, from what I can see. If you don’t love marketing (and plenty of freelance writers don’t), any excuse to be able to write and not market sounds like a lot of fun. If you’re getting plenty of work, it’s hard to be motivated to do something you don’t like.

A good way to avoid this is to budget your time carefully. Since you’re in charge of your work day, make sure you dedicate a certain percentage of that day to marketing no matter how busy you get. Yeah, I know. If you’re swamped with work from one client, it’s hard to make yourself go looking for more work. Suck it up and do it.

Remember that as a freelancer, you can choose how much work you’re willing to accept as well. How many hours a month are you willing to work? I go monthly rather than weekly, because there will be plenty of weeks that you’ll be hammer and tongs at a deadline for one particular client. That’s okay as long as you’ve got more work on deck, and are keeping up on your marketing. What you don’t want to do is let any one client suck up your professional time over a significant period of time.

Hours Per Month	Hours Spent Marketing	Housekeeping	Time for Client Work	Maximum Time Allowed Per Single Client Per Month
120	24	12	84	16.8
140	28	14	98	19.6
160	32	16	112	22.4
200	40	20	140	28

I actually consider myself a client for purposes of time management. As a writer, there’s a certain amount of non-commercial “sharpening the saw” that’s necessary to stay fit, stay alert and stay skilled in my profession[2]. Now I don’t dedicate anywhere near to 20 hours a month on it, but I do make sure that I leave time to write, to work on projects with no direct result and to make sure that I’m exploring avenues that might be useful in the long run.

This article is meant for the one-man shop. If you’re finding that you need at least 40 hours a week specifically to spend on client work, chances are good that what you really need is at least a part-time admin assistant or sales person. If you’re in love with being a one-man shop, raise your rates. That’ll take care of the problem well enough and you’ll bring your time management back into balance.

[1] The Pareto Principle might be okay for really large firms, but isn’t an ideal strategy when you’re a small business servicing small businesses.

[2] This article leaps to mind. I don’t have a paying client for it at the moment.

Do You Have Office Hours?

admin — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:00:26 +0000

Often the idea of working for oneself means freedom! If you get a wild hare to go shopping in the middle of the day, you can do it and finish up your work later in the day. You don’t have a boss breathing down your neck to get a report done. You don’t have to get up at six in the morning to commute to your job.

When I first started as a freelancer, certainly that freedom appealed to me.

In truth, yes, there is a lot of freedom that comes with being your own boss. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But being your own boss is often a matter of self-management. That means you’ll need to decide on company policy.

For the longest time, I did not have specific office hours. As long as I was making a target income, I would work to the job, or work to get the job and not worry too much about it otherwise.

That caused several problems. I found myself never taking a full weekend or never feeling as if my time was really my own. Goofing off on the Internet (which I genuinely enjoy) started to merge with work time so that it was difficult for me to assess whether or not I was being genuinely productive at any given time. I hit my deadlines, so my clients were happy. I was always prepared to teach my classes, so the classes went well.

And that was great.

But, it was easy to lie to myself, to be externally motivated by deadline and visions of happy clients rather than by my own goals.

My own office hours actually started as a way to ensure that I would not get telephone calls from clients at ungodly hours unexpectedly. I set a specific time when I could be contacted (and included the time zone!) so that if a client needed to talk to me outside that time, we’d arrange for a phone meeting. I like being available to my clients, but for random, off-the-cuff stuff, the office hours worked out better.

Then, I started attempting to analyze my productivity. Other than my accounting software, I really couldn’t. I work to the job rather than to the clock. How much of surfing the net was genuine research and how much of it was procrastinating and screwing around? What about personal projects that were falling by the wayside? What about value-added things I could do for my clients that I was not thinking about because I was too busy laughing at something on Youtube? Sure, sure, I was paying the bills. But was I really being effective?

Since the fluid work habits made it too hard to do an honest analysis, I actually set genuine work hours. I was allowed to work outside those hours if I wanted to (and I often do), but I was not allowed to goof off within them. I downloaded a plug-in for Firefox called Leechblock, where I ban social networking and certain blogging sites within my own working hours. While I would have been deeply annoyed if my boss had done this to me in a “Real Job”, I confess that as the boss, it sure does help keep focused on work during worktime.

I chose to make my work hours and my office hours slightly different. Knowing that I am most productive early in the morning, my work hours start long before I’m taking telephone calls from clients. I’m allowed to start goofing off slightly before I stop taking client calls, as well.

Doing this, I’m working smarter rather than harder. I’ve given myself a limited amount of time within which to accomplish my work for my clients, so there’s no use in fooling around. It needs to be done! But when it is done, instead of going off to play, I’m working on other projects that will be useful down the road – creating attractive cheat sheets for the computer classes I teach, working on writing projects that might not have an immediate benefit to my bank account, but in the long term might prove useful, thinking about new and better ways to market my work, thinking about new and better ways to be valuable to my clients. All of these things really are part of my job, even if I’m not directly getting a cash amount for it.

If you’re finding your freelance career stagnating, I encourage you to try office hours for awhile and see what it does for you. There’s nothing like the recharge of knowing that you’ve put in a full day, that it’s legitimately done and goofing off with a clear conscience in your off-time. You’ll come back to your work recharged, excited and clearer-headed, ready to meet all the challenges and rewards of being self-employed.

Do You Recreate the Office When You’re Self-Employed

admin — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:00:36 +0000

There is little that can compete with the heady feeling of freedom when you quit your day job to be self-employed.

Maybe you did it with visions of working in your underwear, sleeping in late, and pulling all-nighters.

The truth is that you do have a certain level of freedom. But, like anything, reality and fantasy often collide unpleasantly.

When you read the self-employment literature, and believe me there is lots, you’ll find two basic camps — the ones who work in their underwear, and the ones who recreate the office, complete with a strict schedule.

Obviously I am working right now as I am writing this. It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m in my living room in what I affectionate call my writin’ chair (big plush burgundy thing with a huge ottoman) and a padded lapdesk so my over-clocked laptop doesn’t burn my thighs. I’m wearing a kimono and brocade kimono jacket because it’s cold. I live in Northern New England and don’t believe in overheating the house. I’m drinking coffee out of the “good china”, have a vanilla-scented candle burning and have some really good mellow jazz on the stereo. So, I’m not exactly at a desk in an office, nor am I wearing what I would wear to an office.

But I am dressed (albeit eccentrically) and my hair is done. I’d have no problem answering the door or receiving visitors.

If you’re anything like me, one of the joys of being self-employed is the simple freedom. It’s great. It really is. I like working in my writin’ chair. I like making my own hours. Never mind that those hours are typically considerably longer than when I was an administrative assistant! The fact that they’re mine and I set them means a lot.

The thing is, it’s even more important to take work time seriously when you’re self-employed. No-one’s looking over your shoulder. All your client cares about is if you’re meeting deadlines and delivering good work. But when there’s a lack of immediate feedback on what you’re doing when, it’s very easy to fritter your time away. When you work in an office, there’s an expectation that you’re going to go home sometime, so you’re less likely to mess around. When you’re working in a home office, it’s very easy to tell yourself that you can blow off worktime on a project because you can always finish it after dinner, or get up early or whatever procrastinating excuse you like to use. Some people get around this by having very strict office hours. I don’t because I feel like it would defeat a lot of the point of being self-employed. If I’m gonna be locked into specific hours, I might as well have the quasi-security of a regular paycheck!

This is not to say that self-discipline isn’t crucial to the self-employed. You all know it is, right? Total given!

To increase efficiency, I have a daily and a weekly prep routine. Every evening, before I stop work for the day, I plan out the next day — what I need to accomplish, make sure I have my supplies for any classes or meetings and lay out my clothes be they business togs or sweats, depending on where I’ll be going that day. I even make sure I’ve cleared up the clutter of the previous workday. This makes it easier for me to use my preferred mode of hitting the ground running. I’m up and accomplishing my goals without bothering to think about it, because the thinking’s been done already! I do a similar thing every Sunday afternoon for the week. After I finish this article, I’ll check over my goals, make sure I’ve planned out steps to achieve them during the week, and do some rough scheduling of what work I’ll be doing when. It’s not set in stone, but gives me a general idea of what I want to accomplish so that when things come up, as they always do, work does not get laid by the wayside and forgotten.

I’m a morning person, myself. I try to be working by about 6:30. This means I’m getting up at closer to 5:15 so I have time to hit the gym and get my workout out of the way before I start my day¹. I can get more done between 6:30 and 11:30 than I can the rest of the day, so I do schedule the “heavy brain” work for the morning if I can possibly help it. When I sit down to work, I do have little rituals that tell me this is work time. I’ll play some Bach, or other music that stimulates my thinking, light a scented candle and have my steaming cup of coffee all ready to go. Because I’d prepped the day before, my workspace is uncluttered and ready for me to put in some good, quality time on my projects.

I do not sign on to social networking sites, or personal email or any of that nonsense while I’m working and I only answer my business phone line. You know, things your boss wishes you were doing in your office. I do not multitask ². Work time is work time. (I have no boss, remember. If I don’t work I don’t get a talking to. I don’t get paid). This is what it takes to be self-employed and make it.

Do you have it?

¹If I do not do this, I waste all morning trying to talk myself into working out. While I’m procrastinating on working out, I’m rarely doing “real work” either, so it’s best for me to get my butt in gear right away.

²Studies are showing that multitasking is really inefficient and kills productivity.

Inviting Flow

admin — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 05:00:17 +0000

Obviously, as the owner of Figart Consulting, I’m self-employed.¹ I don’t have a boss. I do have clients for whom I want to provide a good service, which means my work is judged – as well it should be! But since I generally get a client, then go back to my office², and then get to work. No-one tells me how to schedule that work, how many contracts to accept or how to get it done. I get a deadline, then the rest is up to me.

Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it?

Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s very easy, because you want the income, to accept a bunch of contracts then spazz yourself out trying to get them done by each deadline.

You hear a lot of people say, “Oh, I work better under pressure” in the mistaken belief that the adrenaline rush you get will help improve efficiency.

It’s a myth.

That adrenaline rush is to help you escape a tiger chasing you, not to help you write an article, plan a website, or study financial data. Your brain shuts down except for those details necessary to make physical decisions about things that will save your life – not your bank account.

You’re more efficient at high order thinking³when you’re calm or experiencing “flow”⁴. Flow is impossible when you’re spazzed. So how do you invite flow into your life? It’s random, isn’t it? Of course it’s not. You have the power to create this.

Have a plan. You’d be insane to dive into a project without figuring out what you need to do and the steps you need to complete it. Every minute you spend planning saves you two minutes of work. When you have a plan and know what you’re going to do, you find yourself falling easily into flow.Now, keep in mind that there is a difference between having a plan and having a rigid list of steps that you fall over. A plan is flexible as the situation changes. You can change a plan if you must.

Reduce distractions. Distractions are the enemy of flow. If you can, turn off the ringer on your phone, close your email client, turn off your IMs. I recognize it is not always possible to eliminate distractions and interruptions. That’s okay. I chose the word “reduce” for a reason. If you can eliminate the distraction, do it. Only allow those distractions you have absolutely no control over. These are probably fewer than you think. The world won’t stop if you stop checking your email every ten minutes, and unless you’re on a battlefield, turning off communications devices aren’t going to kill anyone.

Trust the plan. This can be a hard one, especially if you’re distractable or a worrier. Once you’re into the flow of something, you often find it feels good and you want to keep going. If you’ve planned to get a specific task done, do that thing, then move on to the next thing. If you’re like me, you may have three to five projects you work on every day. This means you need to break down your work and allow time each day to work on each one. Trust your planning and move on to what you planned for the next project when you finish a step in the first one. If you’re experience that much increased efficiency, you can always do some more on it when you’ve finished your planned work.

Give it a try. You’ll be amazed at how much you get done and how calm you will be doing it!

¹Actually, everyone is self-employed when you work in an “at will” state, but that’s a matter for another column.

²Yes, yes, my office is wherever I put my laptop.

³And if you’re doing anything that uses a computer to get it done, you’re doing high order thinking.

⁴Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the
activity.

I’ve Got Rhythm

admin — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:00:43 +0000

You need rhythm in the working world.

No, I’m not talking about the rockin’ tunz you’ve got on your MP3 player, but a rhythm to your day.

We all have times of the day when our brains run a little faster, when our thoughts flow a little easier. If we think about it, we can peg a time of day when it’s best to be working, and other times when we might as well hang it up, because there’s no way we’re going to get work done effectively in that time.

Do you take this into consideration as your order your day?

I’m a morning person, so I wake up alert and ready for the day. Ideally, I like to schedule any sort of “heavy brain” work — writing, planning, brainstorming, before noon. I can get more done between six and eleven than I can for the rest of the day, so I start the day early.

I save necessary but routine tasks for later in the day. In the middle of the afternoon, I can paste labels on mailouts, run errands or do routine data entry. I’m still getting necessary work done, but I’m working in harmony with my own rhythm. I know I’m going to be sleepier after lunch and the words will not flow so fluidly if I try to write then.

Evening? I don’t even bother to try to write in the evening any more. When I used to hold down an office job, trying to complete my writing work in the evenings was a Special Sort of Evil, let me tell you!

The thing is, you might be different. If you’re a night person, you might be braindead at eight in the morning. Don’t hit the office and plan for the day. Respect your rhythm. Plan the night before, and plan your mornings to handle routine work until your brain kicks into gear.

Respecting your own mental rhytm increases your productivity exponentially, and I encourage you to take a month and try it!