One thing I’ve been trying to figure out is how to best structure my time. I must say, I’m pretty awesome at tracking my time on assignments, but structuring my time within a given day is an entirely different story. It’s definitely in an experimental phase and I expect to keep trying out new things along the way. If you’re in the same boat as me, here are a few ideas to try on for size:
1. Sprints
My good friend Julia (and retirement goals buddy), who works in UX gave me this idea. As a UX designer her team works in two-week sprints, which is a period of focused, high-intensity work. Two weeks might be a bit much, so you can either organize your time to work in what I call a Mega Sprint, which is the badass version. With a Mega Sprint you crank away for a couple of days or even a week. You can also do a Baby Sprint, which is working at high-intensity for a day or so. I did this a week ago and was surprised at how much work I managed to get done.
You may do a sprint out of pure necessity, or out of choice. Depending on how much work you have on your plate, you might be able to get a week’s worth of work done in a few days.
2.Top Load
I’m an early bird, and my dream schedule is getting most of my work by early afternoon at the latest. As I am working onsite for a gig for another month or so, I won’t be able to try this out until mid-April or so. On days when I work entirely at home, I am usually up by 6 am, work on my fiction and this blog for a bit, then start my freelance work. You can top load within a day or within a week.
Bottom Load
Conversely, you can also bottom loading, which is great if you’re a night owl who loves to burn the midnight oil. This is definitely not me, as I tend to get super groggy around 9 pm or so.
Half/Half
This is what I thought might work best for me, but have been having trouble sticking to it. The Half/Half approach is when I do a block of work in the morning, then take a mid-day break when I exercise, eat lunch, and run errands, then do another block of work in the afternoon. When I do this I tend to have a hard time settling back into work mode after the midday break. I think on my full days when I work from home I am easily tempted to run a bunch of errands or work on other things.
I love to keep my days loosely structured, meaning I’ll have a list of things I need to knock off in a given day, and then kind of do a mix of writing, admin/invoicing, sending out emails, and chores. I know some people like Cait from Blonde on a Budget likes to take one day off during the week and Saturdays, which seems like a pretty cool setup.
My schedule has been feeling a bit crazy lately, and once I get a grip on things I would definitely like to play around with different ways to structure my time. Ultimately it’s up to you to figure out what works best.
How do you like to structure your time? Any suggestions?
