My So-Called Freelance Life - Michelle Goodman [72]
I’d understand if your eyes are starting to glaze over. But really, this isn’t neuroscience; it’s record keeping, filing, and data entry. You’ll give your tax preparer all your 1099 forms, details about any other income you earned during the year, the expense report you created in your accounting or spreadsheet program (you keep the receipts), details on the size of your home office and the utilities you need to deduct, and if you moved since filing your last tax return, your current address.
A good tax preparer will walk you through the process, let you know if she needs any additional information from you, and make the process as painless as possible. When she’s done working her accounting magic, she’ll mail you your tax return to sign. Then you’ll mail it in (along with any money you owe) to Uncle Sam, curse the feds for wasting your hard-earned tax dollars on programs you don’t support, stick a copy of the completed return in your filing cabinet, and wash your hands of the whole matter until the following year.
Chapter 17
Fun with Time Management
Stop wasting time, start asking for help, and get a life outside work
“Lunch is for wimps.”
—Michael Douglas in Wall Street, 1987
Working for yourself means being one part task mistress, one part zen mistress. Now that nothing’s stopping you from crawling back into bed for the next six hours or watching court TV from dawn till dusk, you need structure, routine. With no boss cruising the halls, you need to prioritize your brains out and light a blowtorch under your own arse. At the same time, you need to be flexible enough to accommodate the star client who calls with a quick question about the rough draft or design specs you turned in the week before. And you need the calm, laserlike focus of the Super Nanny so you can return to the task at hand as soon as you’re done tending to the interruption.
What you don’t need, however, is some elaborate “productivity system” or a spreadsheet that maps—to the minute—when you plan to eat, piss, pet your dog, call client A, email client B, and sweet-talk client C each day. When it comes to time management, less is more. So in the interest of expediency, let’s dive right in.
Yes, Mistress! (How to Crack Your Own Whip)
Your first order of business, if you haven’t done so already, should be to set some office hours for yourself. If you have kids, your hours will likely be “whenever little Lyle is at school or daycare.” If you don’t, four hours of work can easily expand to fill the sixteen hours of unclaimed time you have each weekday if you’re not careful.
To set your hours, figure out when you’re sharpest and most productive (for me, it’s 8:00 or 9:00 AM till 4:00 or 5:00 PM), then factor in when your clients are open for business. Ideally you want your customers to be able to reach you during at least 50 or 60 percent of their workday, even if it means you have to get up a tad earlier than normal because your clients are in an earlier time zone. Then let your customers know what your hours are. The sooner you start training them, the less likely they’ll be to call you during Project Runway.
But being a beacon of freelance efficiency doesn’t begin and end with setting office hours. Some additional suggestions:
DON’T DO LUNCH. To me, lunch dates with freelance friends are for days off, not workdays. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that lunch takes just an hour—with travel time, it’s two or three hours, minimum. Factor in someone showing up half an hour late, taking a bunch of client calls during the meal, or talking you into three rounds of margaritas, and you’ve blown the entire afternoon. You’re better off meeting