Contests and Promotions from ResearchWritingCenter.com, Freelance Writing: Simple Tips on Complicated TopicsTime Management Tools for Freelance Writers (Contest Finalist Submission)

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You may be good at time management, but not good enough!

Quite often, you still find difficulties in beating certain crucial deadlines, or worse of all, failing to beat the deadlines. As a result of this, your overall performance and productivity are lowered, your job reputation skewed, and your freelance career is at stake.

Generally, life becomes so hectic and stressful. If this trend is not contravened, you are surely bound to hit a dead end.

Listen friend, being a professional freelance writer that you are, you don’t have to go through this mess. Acquaint yourself with some of the best known time management tools.

It’s assumed that every freelance writer has some sort of time management tools at his or her own disposal. Some have classy table clocks consuming substantial amount of space on their office tables.

Others rely on manual or electronic timetables, appointment diaries, calendars, reminders; in fact, this list is by no means exhausted. For those who are still reliant on “To Do List” as their time management technique, unfortunately the bus is long gone and they are left behind.

This is an outdated time management technique which also proves to be very inefficient.

There is a plethora of useful time management tools available in the market today, both for free and for commercial purposes.

Concoction of these tools seems to increase with rising demand for effective time management skills in the contemporary business world. I personally find these tools very helpful in managing not only my freelance workload, but also my daily life.

They include Planners, Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar Reminder, Work-rave, Rescue-time, the list goes on. Not mentioned here but which is an authentic useful time management tool is your computer.

Bearing these tools in mind, we may now need to have a feasible starting point. We can consider looking briefly at some, if not all of them. Planners, Google Calendar, and Work-rave can do for today.

Planners are very common time management tools. The planners can either be electronic or manual (in paper form). With planners, you would be able to jot down your key daily tasks all less than one roof.

Timing and descriptions of daily errands are well accommodated in the planner calendar, normally between one and two pages per day for the paper planners. Whichever type you prefer, planners can be valuable tools for freelance writers.

An electronic planner is, however, more appealing to our sense of time.

Google Calendar is one of the many Google tools you might have come across. This is a modern type time management tool, very effective and affordable. It’s built on a friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI).

If you are fond of forgetting important dates, and have difficulties synchronizing multiple tasks in an organized manner, and then Google Calendar has been designed for you in particular. The Google Calendar application enables users to create schedules and arrange them systematically based on their levels of priority, or any other appropriate order of arrangement ideal for the users. You can try this one out, save yourself great deal of time.

With reference to the old saying, too much work makes Jack a dull boy. On the contrary, this truism is not irrelevant when undertaking a freelance writing project.

Like many other people in various occupations, freelance writers may need some time set aside for their general social life. Leisure times can break the boredom of working on orders. When renowned authors like Michael Stallard asserts, “human beings are not machines”, they are seemingly arguing from a similar perspective.

Work-rave is yet another very essential time management tool. This tool is, plausibly, a consequent of the very arguments put forward regarding work and leisure time. Work-rave application will alert you when it`s time to take a break, preventing you from overworking yourself.

This tool is recommended by health experts as convenient for preventing Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI).It`s a free application, and can be run on either Linux or Microsoft Windows. You definitely have a choice to make.

Be rational in making decisions regarding working hours and leisure time, not to have several breaks allotted for leisure, and only a couple of hours left for work. Experienced freelance writers are aware that completion of certain projects require good amount of time.

Thus so far, it’s evident having at least one of these time management tools is important, but knowing how to efficiently use the one in your possession is very important. Needless to have a classy table clock its purpose is to attract all sorts of dust and dirt around. Good luck in your freelance writing endeavors.

About the Author:
Jacob O. – a former RWC employee, worked with the RWC for almost a year! He specializes on the following topics: journalism, public relations, ethics, psychology, public administration and diplomacy! Has extensive freelance writing experience, which you can experience by reading his contest submission! As he describes himself: “a PR consultant by profession, journalist, an instructor and a writer. With regard to writing, I have been able to work with some of the most reputable writing agencies around, like Research Writing Center (RWC). If not writing, then there couldn’t be a better hobby for me!”

This essay was written as a submission for the Research & Writing Contest, held by the ResearchWritingCenter.com. If you want to stay updated and read other contest submissions, which became the contest finalists check back here in 1 week, when we’ll be posting another contest finalist submission!
Cheers