Fast forward to a couple of days ago: I said to myself, “Gee, I’ve hardly been working. I need to start hustling.” But then I realized that I had plenty of work: Due in September I had four blog posts (about 500 words each), eight pages of website copy for a corporate client, a Writer’s Digest column, a short article for Muscle & Performance, a feature article for a major women’s magazine, and a profile for Antioch University. And yet, although I made good progress on these deadlines, I took off three days last week. That’s right — I worked only two days last week.

That’s when it hit me: Normally, I would have ass in chair for several hours each day — but that didn’t mean I was working that entire time. I would often click away from an article in progress to one of those distracting websites. What I didn’t realize was how much time I must have spent doing that, as I got done in two days last week what would have taken me a whole week before I blocked the time-sink sites!

Wow, this is an amazing feeling. To think that one simple change has boosted my productivity so much.

This week I’ll be working three days. I always worked fewer than 40 hours per week before, but now I’m putting in even less time. I’ve been using my newfound free time to go to the park with my husband and son while the weather is nice, meet up with other moms for lunch and coffee, hang out with our new exchange student, exercise, and generally relax.

As I also mentioned on this blog, I’ve made a vow to no longer take on assignments that have red flags and to stop working with clients that treat me badly. I haven’t had the opportunity to turn down any PITA clients yet (because none of them have approached me), but just knowing that I’ll only be writing for clients I like compounds the great feeling I have from gaining so much free time while still earning full-time income.

Here’s your challenge: Determine where the time-sucks are in your work life (Internet? TV? eating? sleeping?) and think of tactics — even extreme ones — to get your time back under control. What will you do this week? [lf]

For some writers, moving to the next level means going from unpaid to paid work, or from a dollar a word to two dollars a word. Whatever it means for you, here are some tips to moving on up in the writing world.

1. Start where you are. My buddy Jennifer Lawler is a very successful magazine writer, book author, and now, and agent. When she started out writing, she concentrated on her expertise: martial arts. She wrote for Black Belt magazine and other fighting titles. When she wanted to move into more popular and better-paying consumer magazines, she sent them pitches rooted in the martial arts; her first consumer magazine piece was an essay for Family Circle based on the mindful aspect of martial arts. She also ended up writing on self defense for Oxygen and Cooking Light. Later Jennifer garnered several clips from Family Circle that were not about martial arts because the editor liked her work. If you have an expertise, use that to help catapult you to the next level. Once you’re at the next level, you can gradually expand your topics.

2. Don’t go all or nothing. Don’t burn bridges with your current markets as you try to make the leap to bigger and better; it makes more sense to drop them slowly as you develop relationships with the more desirable magazines. For example, when I decided I wanted to write more complicated pieces, I didn’t start turning down service pieces — after all, those are still my bread and butter! You may be tempted to drop all of the work you want to move out of so you have time to pitch the better markets, but if you do that you could end up without an income. The only exceptions are magazines that pay nothing or that pay ridiculously low fees: Those you can safely drop.

3. Get help. When I got the assignment to write the narrative piece for a business magazine, I was clueless. So I asked my buddy Elaine Grant (whose e-course Magazine Writing Basics starts on September 14) for help since she’s done many of these types of pieces. I took Elaine out to lunch, and all of those things I said I had to learn in order to write this article? She taught me. She even helped me by critiquing my first and second drafts. So if you can’t afford to take a fabulous e-course ;-> , approach a writer you know who writes for the markets you’re aiming for — and ask for help.

4. Ask. If making it to the next level, for you, means moving up to a higher pay rate, try asking your current editors if they can give you raises. This can be a lot easier than breaking into higher-paying markets, though of course you should try to do both.

5. Help a buddy. When I started earning bigger paychecks from better magazines, I didn’t just drop my old clients saying “Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out!” My husband was just starting out as a freelance writer, and I recommended him to these editors. They were thrilled to have another good writer, and I still had a positive relationship with the magazines even though I didn’t write for them anymore. If you don’t have an aspiring writer waiting in the wings, you can offer to find writers who are willing to work for the editor’s rates by posting in writers’ forums you frequent.

6. Get moving! So many writers tell me they’ll pitch their dream markets as soon as they build a good selection of clips from [insert name of non-paying magazine here]. Smarten up: You need only one clip to say you’re a published writer, and if you get bogged down writing for free (or super cheap) to build clips — that’s your fear talking, not your logic. Just pitch your dream markets — you lean more by doing and experiencing and making mistakes pitching your A-list markets than you do by stalling with the non-paying markets. You don’t even have to let go of the apron strings of the magazines you want to eventually ditch (see “Don’t go all or nothing” above). Just pitch! [lf]

The bad news is that the freelance life is all about lack of control. We can’t control how editors will react to our communications, how much work we’ll have and when we’ll get it, when sources will be available for interviews, if and when the editor will come back to us with a major revise, when our work will be printed, how our articles will look once they’re in print, and even how much or when we’ll get paid. To freelance, you have to be ready for anything at any time, and that can bring on a case of major demotivation.

Luckily, even if we can’t control many aspects of the freelancing life, there are ways to gain control over various parts of it so that we get a sense of authority over our careers.

1. Set your morning routine. Instead of sitting down at the computer first thing in the morning and merely reacting to “urgent but not important” tasks all day, such as answering e-mails as they come in, set a definite morning routine. As I mentioned last week, Jenny Cromie of The Productive Muse wrote a great post called “Is Your Morning Routine Ruining Your Productivity?” That should give you some tips to get started.

I find this advice really helpful. I was one of those get-up-and-check-email-all-day people until my coach at The Yoga of Writing retreat in New Mexico gave me a morning yoga practice. Now, I get up and do just 20 minutes or so of yoga poses before heading downstairs to make my tea and get on with the day. Though the yoga practice isn’t work-related, it helps me clear my mind for the day and focus on those tasks that give me the greatest bang for my working buck.

2. Time your day. For one week, keep a time log of your days. This helps you weed out unproductive uses of your time (like reading Blogging Project Runway every day) and gives you a sense of control over how you spend your days.

3. Make a list. Get everything you need to do out of your head and onto paper. This past year I posted an extensive Q&A with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done. He recommends doing a mind dump of everything you can think of that you need to do. All those to-dos are cluttering your mind and keeping you from focusing on the most important task at any given moment. Put the first step for each of these to-dos on separate lists for different areas of your life, such as “To Call” for when you’re near the phone, “Errands” for when you’re in the car, and “Computer” for those tasks that need to be done when you’re at your computer. This will help you feel in control of all those little tasks that were previously clogging your brain.

4. Take a shower already! We freelancers joke about working in our jammies, but nothing makes you feel less in control than sitting at a desk unshowered and unbrushed at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Take a shower in the morning and put on some nice but comfortable clothes. If you’re a woman (or a guy, if you’re into it), you can even put on a bit of makeup and some jewelry. This will help you face your work day feeling put together and ready.

5. Revamp your job. Make a list of every task you do in your job, such as setting interviews, researching, and writing queries, and then brainstorm ways to revamp and improve those processes. Then experiment with the new way of doing things to see if they work better. We often do the same things over and over again out of habit, even when they aren’t the best methods, and looking at those habits with a fresh eye will help you come up with ways to improve them. For example, could you schedule your interviews a half hour or 45 minutes apart instead of an hour apart? (This one works for me because I realized that my interviews take under half an hour, but I would schedule them an hour apart “just to be sure” and then sit there twiddling my thumbs for 40 minutes.) Instead of transcribing interviews the way you usually do, could you hire a transcriptionist to do it for you, so you can concentrate on something you’re better at, such as writing queries?

6. Do a blitz. Need work? Don’t wait for it to fall into your lap. You can’t directly control when editors give you assignments, but you can influence how much you get and when you get it by stepping up production in a concentrated blitz. Pitching editors is a numbers game — the more you do it, the more likely you are to have success. Spend a day or two doing nothing but churning out queries, resending old queries to new markets, following up on queries you already sent, and e-mailing letters of introduction.

7. Delegate it. I wrote about this in my recent post “7 More Productivity Hacks for Freelancers.” If there’s something you’re not good at, or that you hate, find someone who does it better and delegate to them. This will give you a sense of control because you’re consciously choosing what you will and will not do in your career.

8. Make a schedule. Instead of doing tasks whenever you think of them or whenever you happen to have free time, which perpetuates a sense of being at the whim of others, schedule important jobs into your day. For example, perhaps you want to send a letter of introduction to an editor every day at 1 pm. Or maybe you schedule interviews only between 9 am and 12 pm every day so you have the rest of the day to research and write.

This is something I need to do. On a typical day I may have interviews at 11 am, 1 pm, and 4 pm. It’s hard for me to concentrate in between interviews because I’m always anticipating the next interview, even when it’s two hours away. Talk about feeling out of control!

9. Set up an admin day. It’s hard to feel in control when you’re spending all day putting out tiny fires as they come up. Designate one day of the week, or certain hours of a day, to clear out administrative tasks like signing contracts, invoicing, copying clips, and filing.

10. Beat the clock. Here’s one from Steve Pavlina’s new book Personal Development for Smart People: “Estimate how long a task will take to complete. Then start a timer, and push yourself to complete it in half that time.” For example, if it normally takes you four hours to write 1,000 words, see if you can write it in two hours instead. It may come out like ass, in which case you can revise — but you may be pleasantly surprised by the quality you can turn out in half your usual time.

What do you do to control your time — and your freelancing career? Post your experiences in the Comments section below! [lf]

Remember the rant British restaurant reviewer Giles Coren sent to his editors about an indefinite article that was removed from his copy? It’s here. Be sure you should read it before you watch this hilarious piece of satire. [db]

Watch your butt

This is an indelicate subject, but I’m an indelicate person, so here goes.

The more successful you are as a freelancer, the more you sit on your ass. Sitting for hours a day at a keyboard = unhappy heiney. Unhappiness begins with a spreading posterior. You’ll notice as the years pass, your butt cheeks spread. Then, you hit 40 or, if you’re female, pop out a few kids, and whoa, it’s Preparation H time. Combine the spreading-butt phenomenon and the horrendous hemorrhoids with a terrible diet — lots of coffee and diet soda, not enough fruits and fiber — and the butt expansion/hemorrhoidal hell only gets worse.

We writers fuss over our wrists, necks, and lower backs, but it’s the butt that bears the brunt of our profession. Make your butt a health asset:

• Do butt squeezes throughout the day. Not only does this help tighten your glutes (the heiney muscles), it gets blood moving and flowing “down there.”
• Aim to eat 25 to 30 grams of dietary fiber every day. Fiber keeps you “regular,” as grandma used to say. When you’re not regular, you’re constipated, and chronic constipation is one cause of those nasty hemorrhoids. Most Americans don’t get anywhere near this recommended amount of fiber in their diets, due, in part, to a love of processed food. There are so many easy ways to sneak extra fiber in your diet:
  • Look for the breakfast cereals out there that have anywhere from 5 to 9 grams of fiber in every serving (preferably cereals that don’t have a lot of sugar and/or artificial sweeteners).
  • Eat raspberries: One-half cup contains a whopping 20 grams of fiber!
  • Include a huge, vegetable-rich salad every day for lunch, and sprinkle it with wheat bran or ground flaxseeds.
  • If you can’t get all your fiber requirements from diet alone, then look to supplements. The Vitamin Shoppe makes a product called Miracle Fiber that I really like. It’s inulin, a natural vegetable fiber, that dissolves completely and flavorlessly into any beverage. A teaspoon has 5 grams of fiber. I add it to my tea and water to boost my fiber intake. I even sneak it into my kid’s hot cocoa.

Aren’t you glad you asked? Ooops, you didn’t.

Play with your diet

When I worked in a cubicle, I used to read a lot of diet books. Not just books to help me lose weight (God knows all those trips to the vending machines took their toll!), but books about vegetarianism and general health improvement. Most of these books required a new way of eating and thinking about food. They also required a lot of time to shop, prepare food, and cook. Or the plan would require me to eat at certain times of the day — and those times were usually when I was trying to get a package out the door to Fed Ex or was suffering through a boooooring meeting.

Maybe you’ve been thinking about going vegan. Or you’d like to cut sugar or caffeine out of your diet. If you’re freelancing, you have the perfect job, the ideal setting, to make these kind of dietary changes (changes to your exercise habits, too!). You have flexibility to plan your schedule. You have no boss who’s going to raise her right eyebrow if you need to chop vegetables at 10:30 a.m. Moreover, sometimes dietary changes make you cranky. I remember giving up caffeine when I worked in an office job. It was horrible. I was snappy, my head hurt, but I still had to perform at 100 percent. If you’re doing this at home, though, you can take it easy for a few days, maybe even sneak in a couple naps. Then there are some of the unpleasant side effects some dietary changes create. Think about what happens when you increase your fiber intake or start eating more legumes. It’s really nice not having to share this part of a new diet with co-workers. (Cats and dogs don’t seem to mind strange noises and smells.)

Set up an HSA

A lot of self-employed folks think HSAs, or health savings accounts, are bennies for those who work for an employer. Not so. You can easily set up your own HSA. (An HSA is tax-exempt money you set aside in an account to pay for things like doctor’s visits, insurance deductibles, prescriptions, eyeglasses — even stuff like sunscreen and massages!) Last week someone on a writers’ board I belonged to posted about a company that offers no-fee HSAs for consumers. I haven’t set one up through them, fwiw, but it looks promising.  [db]

I confess that I thought for a long time that Twitter was dumb and boring and who-the-&^%$ cares about so-and-so being on his fourth cup of coffee before 10 a.m. Do I really give a rat’s ass? On the other hand, when I learned the basics of blogging, I remember feeling this twinge of excitement and my brain started churning out possibilities. Then of course my inner naysayer raised her eyebrows: “I bet there’s a lot of software stuff involved,” she whined. “Plus, you’ve got so many other things going on your life. Do you really have time for these shennanigans?”

But I jumped in anyway, just like I did with Twitter. I started a food blog with two other writer friends on Blogspot. Then I decided to use WordPress‘s blogging platform on my business website because I figured out it made updating much easier. I suggested to our publisher and Linda that we move from a monthly newsletter to a blog, the blog you’re reading right now. And lately, I’ve gone on to develop other blogs as I’ve decided to shift my writing away from newspapers and magazines; I believe deep in my heart that traditional publishing avenues are changing, and not for the better. I’m slowly learning about stuff like blog monetization and SEO — and yeah, it’s overwhelming and often I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, but life’s little instruction books are pretty skimpy anyway, so what the hell?

I’m still not sure how Twitter will improve my life, but I’m willing to put myself out there to see what happens. Oh … and here’s my twitter: http://twitter.com/dianaburrell. And I promise I’ll try not to blog too much about my coffee-drinking habits. [db]

1. Set the timer for 5 minutes and work. This is especially useful when I’m putting a task off, something distasteful like logging expenses or paying bills. I spent six hours in hard labor giving birth to my son, so five minutes is nothin’. When the time is up, 75 percent of the time I’ll keep going till the task is finished. Otherwise I’ll take a short break, and usually come back to finish.

2. Use an e-mail assistant to manage the details. Since I’m always on e-mail, I love IWantSandy, an e-mail assistant that helps me remember everything from appointments and interviews to phone numbers and flight schedules. Every morning, Sandy e-mails me a list of things I need to do, everything from a reminder to take my vitamins to a list of calls I must make that day. Better yet, she’s free! [ETA: And now she's dead. Unfortunately, the developers pulled the plug on this fantastic service in late 2008. Boo hoo!]

3. Keep a notebook next to your keyboard. I keep a 5″ x 7″ notebook on my desk at all times and use it to jot down details from a phone conversation, editors’ names, potential sources, quotes I find on the web, books that look interesting, assignment details, passwords for websites — literally anything that crosses my desk during the day. I can’t tell you how many times this notebook has saved my ass. (Can you see it under my timer?) Every couple weeks I go through it and transfer important info into my other filing systems. Low-tech but handy.

4. Remember the Rule of Three. I wrote about this back in September 2007. On those days when you have zero motivation, pick three tasks on your to-do list, preferably important things, do them, then allow yourself to take the rest of the day off. I find this hack immensely helpful on the days following a vacation or illness. It’s probably not a great hack to use every day, but if you’re in a deep rut, it gets you moving.

5. Batch tasks. Got phone calls to make? Do them all at once. Rather than invoice your editors as you finish a project, schedule an hour during a week to invoice all of them at once. I do this with accounting: I schedule an hour every Friday to record expenses and log payments in Quicken. During the week, I simply throw check stubs and receipts into a folder for my Friday fun time.

6. Think of a writer/freelancer/businessperson you admire and ask yourself, “What would s/he do?” There are a couple freelance writers whose work I respect. Whenever I get stuck trying to figure out what to do next or how I should proceed, I imagine what they would do were they standing in my shoes. Then I do what I think they’d do. This really helps when I’m nervous making a phone call or dithering over whether or not to take a project. Would X do this project at $1 word and a crappy contract? How would Y handle a project in which she was a bit over her head? This mindset also helps when I’m procrastinating on a story. There’s just no way any of my writing idols would miss a deadline or be caught watching reruns of Top Chef during the day … so I buckle down and hit that keyboard.

7. Schedule rewards. When you’re a freelancer, there’s no one there to hand you an employee appreciation award or a bonus check for a job well done. You’ve got to step up and take that responsibility. You’re probably way more creative and generous than any suit or corporate HR department, so have some fun rewarding yourself. When I meet my querying goals for the week or turn in a tough story, I’ll gift myself with a venti nonfat caramel macchiato or an episode of “The Wire” (thanks Netflix!). What are your rewards?

8. Play beat the clock. I like to do this when I’m dragging my ass on filing a story. If a story’s due the following day, I’ll say, “Ok, I’m going to get a first draft of this done by noon today.” I’ll eat lunch, take a break and work on something else, then say, “Now I’ll go through and edit this until 4.” Then I’ll set a time the next day to send it in to my editor. I’m one of those writers who likes to file things before noon on the day they’re due, so 12:00 p.m. is always a major deadline time for me. I’m at my desk at 9 a.m. rarin’ to go.

9. Build accountability into your week. Knock wood, I have a lot of repeat business with editors so as I’m going back and forth with them on an assignment, I’ll say things like, “I’ll have some recipe ideas to you by Friday” or “I’ll get three story ideas to you by the 15th for your planning meeting.” If I know people are counting on me, I’ll get the work done.

10. Keep to a schedule. One of the perks of ‘lancing is that you get to make your own hours. But one of the pitfalls is that you get to make your own hours. Who’s going to dock your pay if you’re not in your chair at 9:00 a.m. sharp? But I think most highly productive writers and freelancers keep good work schedules. They tend to show up to work at the same time each day, accomplish their most important tasks during their high-energy hours, and schedule those irksome tasks like chasing down checks or interviewing during their low-energy periods. Their days follow a predictable pattern of output. Less successful writers and freelancers tend to take a more whimsical approach to the day, letting their moods, deadlines, or bank balances dictate their schedules. Don’t fall into this trap, unless you’re happy writing as a hobby.

So what are your productivity hacks? Add them to the comment section below. [db]

“Fail well.” I like it! What do you think? [lf]

I’ve preached before about the virtues of a streamlined to-do list. Here’s a strategy to make it even more effective. Rather than list tasks that you know you’ll get done today because you have the flames of hell toasting your buttocks or just adding stuff like “do laundry,” “buy new file folders,” and “organize paperclips,” write down the three tasks you’ve been putting off. Go on, try it. The tasks can be anything, personal or business-related, as long as they’re creating even the vaguest sense of dread in your stomach. For me, this week, some of my to-do list tasks included sorting out an invoice for a client, figuring out a glitch on our server, analyzing a bill from a vendor and calling him to correct it, picking up my office for 10 minutes (seriously, it was a horrendous mess and I couldn’t think with the clutter), saying no to a friend, and writing for 30 minutes on a new project. Completing just three such items every day has given me an incredible boost of energy and cleared up my mind to focus on tasks that had to be done on a certain day, such as assignments, interviews, or appointments.

Of course, it’s always good to keep a running list of stuff to do — I still keep a list like that, only I tuck it into a drawer and work hard to cross off stuff on my list of three.  Try it out, and let me know what you think: good idea or does it make you forget stuff you really have to do today, like buy toilet paper?

P.S. And if you’ve been putting off signing up for one of our Renegade Writer eCourses, please put this task front-and-center of your new handy-dandy to-do list. We’re starting to get a rush of last-minute signups, so you don’t want to miss out. Three of the courses start Monday, January 7, 2008. That’s less than a week! [db]