Hi there!
My name is Patrick, and I’ll be your PlanArty advisor if you’re a freelancer.
Not so long ago, my daily routine was something like:
- Wake up at around 8
- Make coffee and sit down at the computer
- Work until late afternoon
And here comes the big surprise: after working all day, not even half of the planned work is done. And this was happening on a good day. In a bad one, I had no idea what I did all day long.
So, forget the free afternoon, and I've worked until my eyes were burning - ok, outside it's dark already. Go out with some friends or watch a movie...no, too tired. Just get in bed, tomorrow will be better. But, of course, the next day...the same story.
At this point, I realized that I use to work all day long but, on a good day, I do half of my work. Therefore, also half of my planned income. Not to mention the bad days, when, at the end of the day, I have no idea what I've been doing all day long. The obvious problem was: no work done, no income!
I realized I need help. Since my main concern was the fact that I was losing time without knowing exactly what on, I started using PlanArty . I recorded on PlanArty everything I was doing during the day and, after one week, I checked the results...
BIG SURPRISE there :)
An average day looked like:
And the BIG RESULT of time tracking...
Billable time = ONLY 357 minutes from 780.
But, if I consider that each time I returned to work on today’s project, I had to spend 5 minutes figuring out where I was and which was the next step I had been thinking about, those 357 minutes were actually only 317 minutes, 5:28 hours!
Wasted time
Time spent on social media = 161 minutes, 2.6 hours!
Time spent on different activities that could have been done much faster if they were well organized: 305 minutes = 6 hours
So, from all of those 13 working hours, I only have around 4.6 hours spent on the project that I had actually planned for today. And, if I also consider the productivity factor...well let's be honest. After 12 hours of sitting in front of the computer, the work that I've been done between 20:03 and 21:00, under normal circumstances, would have been easily done within 20 minutes. And, most likely, with a lot fewer errors.
And this was a "normal" day :(
If instead of 3 clients, there were 5-6 who wrote me regarding an issue, at the end of the 14 hours work program I had 2-3 hours of billable time, at best.
And I was so proud of myself about how serious I am, and how much I work…
In fact, I was losing a lot of my time on social media, and some more on correcting the errors that I made because of my disorganized working style. During the time I spent on the actual billable projects, my productivity was a disaster, to put it mildly.
Thanks to PlanArty , by recording my time and seeing the outcome on the reports, I realized that I drastically have to change something! This, if I wanted to be productive and make more money. And yes, I wanted!
So, here is what I did with my time tracking
Better planning by better analyzing and prioritizing things. Learned from PlanArty !
- No more social media and email reading during the morning coffee!
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- I plan my next day at the end of each day: what I must accomplish, and what I do exactly from this hour to that hour
- And voila! Already have 1.5 hours gained
- No immediate answer on Skype, messenger, yahoo messenger, …
- During the time I use for the planned work, no phone ringing, no online messenger. Just a clean desk, and my work
My usual day now looks something like:
08:00 - 13:00 - work on today's project
13:00 - 14:00 - lunch break, read some news, social media or take a short walk
14:00 - 16:00 - work on today's project
16:00 - 17:30 - solve the issues reported yesterday by email, messenger, …
17:30 - 18:00 - read my emails, read my social media for my clients messages. Plan the things to do for the next day
The result?
Well, it’s astonishing!
- I have 7 hours of billable time each day. I even raised my hourly rate, because my productivity became so much higher. I work on my projects the first part of the day without interruptions.
- My clients are happier because my work contains fewer errors. And there are any, I’ve got those fixed in 24 hours.
- Before that, OK, I answered them as they wrote and started to repair immediately. But, in the same way, if something else comes up, I would leave this aside and take on the new task that appeared. For the interrupting and jumping from one task to another, the correction usually arrived at my client in a lot longer than 24 hours, usually after they reminded me at least once again.
- Even from the error correction, I can bill a certain part. Most of the errors, now that I work according to a plan, are not my mistakes. Only small changes to the original logic
- I’m done at 18:00. 10 hours of work, from which 7-8 hours billable at higher rates, and happy clients!
Thank you PlanArty
