Your Daily Freelance Checklist
Do you wonder what the day-to-day life of a freelancer actually looks like?
Or maybe you want to know what daily tasks you should be doing to move the needle forward every day.
Because when you have so many balls in the air you forget to do your main needle movers, work starts to slow down.
That’s why I created a Daily Freelance Checklist for myself and for any other freelance writer who wants to make sure they make the right kind of progress every day.
These tasks are your needle movers. They keep your momentum going at all times. They keep you moving in an upward direction, and they keep you sane.
Cuz, you can find yourself in one heckuva crazy mess come tax time if you haven’t been keeping track of your daily income and expenses.
I’ve also been mucking around in my Arc System Organizer (can’t recommend this enough!), making it all pretty like and more organized and productive for me, and wanted something pretty I could use over and over again.
What the Daily Freelance Checklist Covers
So it’s a checklist, so what?
Well, a checklist is your biggest ally.
It’s the best way to make daily progress in your business.
While the idea of a checklist is really simple, the payoff after 30, 90, 365 days of following it is phenomenal. Like, write-3,000-words-per-day, now-you-wrote-13-novels-a-year phenomenal. Those little daily tasks add up.
As a freelance writer, your daily checklist pushes you to:
- Check your finances daily: so you have your accounting and taxes in order; so you know if you’re achieving your desired income level; so you know exactly where your money is going.
- Track your accomplishments every day: so you know if you’re getting enough done; so you can see how much you’ve achieved.
- Make sure you pitch regularly: so you never run dry on work; so yours is the first name that comes to clients’ minds; so you can scale your business and sub-contract down the road.
- Stay on top of your marketing: so you find more leads; so everyone knows your name; so your business is well-received; so your business shows up better in search rankings.
- Learn something new every day: learning and personal development change you and your work for the better, always.
- Keep your finger on the pulse of your industry: so you don’t sound outdated or uninformed.
How to use the Daily Freelancing Checklist
Here are my suggestions for using the checklist:
- Put the daily tracker inside a sheet protector in the front of your planner and mark each task off as you complete them with a dry erase marker. That way, you can hold yourself accountable without wasting paper on a bunch of printed copies.
- Spend a few minutes every evening to plan out your next morning beforehand. Write down your priorities for the day and then block out time for them. Squeeze everything else in around it.
- Try not to spend tons of time on each task. For example, perusing your Google Alerts should only take from 30 seconds to a few minutes, if you click to read an article. You can track your earnings and daily accomplishments quickly as you go throughout the day.
- You can also double up on tasks, such as listening to a personal development podcast while you’re working out or tracking your income and accomplishments in the same document.
- Always, always, always be marketing your business and making connections, even if you’re over-booked. You always want to be expanding your reach and growing your network. Besides, overbooked is a great time to consider outsourcing, scaling, or raising your rates.
So, without further ado, here’s your printable:
{{^^^^^Click me!}}
And hey, I’m not even asking for your email address. I just want you to have this.
I do want to let you know, though, that our comprehensive Freelance Freedom From Corporate Course is just about to launch {{you can find a few of the most important modules from the course here}}
In it, you’ll find everything you need to build a freelance writing business from scratch while you’re still in corporate.
The course includes a complete business-building checklist, including a sample 30-day schedule to work from the ground up.
If you’d like to know when that’s available, make sure you are signed up for the FREE mini introductory course here.
I hope this checklist helps you find a regular rhythm in your self-employed day as a freelance writer.
I’d love to see how you’re using your checklist, so make sure to tag me @Jess_FlashFit on Instagram. Then, come back here after you’ve used it awhile to tell me how well your needle is moving. I love hearing from you!
