Save Time as a Freelancer: Time-Saving Schedule Hacks! [Free Ebook]

If you’ve chosen to follow the digital nomad lifestyle, you know that budgeting time between work and play can be tough. Being in charge of our time management is simultaneously a pro and a con of my digital nomad lifestyle – but I wouldn’t change it. All I needed were these hacks to save time as a freelancer; it’s been smooth sailing since I found them!

Between work, home and a personal life, lots of freelancers find themselves wishing there were more hours in the day. Adding more hours to the clock isn’t an option, but I have found a few ways to carve out extra time for myself and my work.

These hacks are especially useful for digital nomads who are looking to save time as a freelancer to apply to their travel time. After all, what’s the point of working in an exotic place but never leaving the coworking office?

(Side-note: coworking spaces CAN be beneficial to your freelance flow. You may even be able to find clients while coworking. Skip the networking event and save time as a freelancer by shopping for clients while coworking!)

Examine your priorities and make some compromises.

We all have different priorities in life. Some people hate eating take-out food and some can’t stand to see a messy room. But cooking, deep cleaning, AND working every single day will run you ragged in no time.

If you want to free up some time, you’re going to need to lower your standards just a little and make some compromises.

Write down all of your daily tasks. Create a numbered order for these tasks based on how important they are to you. You will have to get rid of some of the lower-numbered priorities if you’re going to save time as a freelancer.

Maybe you can sacrifice your home-cooked meal every night, trading it in for meal-prep and the occasional take-out dinner. Reprioritizing doesn’t mean you have to stop doing your favorite things all together, but rather do them less often.

Make sure you’re creating value with your time.

As freelancers, we have a wide variety of daily tasks. Since we’ve already written a list of our daily tasks for the first hack, let’s take another look at it.

Sometimes, even our favorite daily tasks are what’s making us lose so much time as freelancers. We’re often doing at least one task that makes us lose time without offering much of a payoff.

Finding out where we’re not creating value with our time is simple:

Write down and track all your activities for 1-2 weeks. (I highly recommend using RescueTime to track your tasks automatically, it’s one of my favorite tools for freelancers.)

Once you see the report, consider not only the time spent on each task, but also your concentration and energy levels. Did you spend a long time doing something that you weren’t really engaged with? That’s a time-waster! 

To figure out which tasks are worth your time, consider the efficiency and value of each task. If you have tasks that take a long time but deliver little value, it’s time to scrap or outsource them.

Delegate the time-wasting tasks.

We’re freelancers! We believe in and depend on the gig economy, so make use of it and hire some help. Relying on your fellow freelancer is a great way to save time as a freelancer.

For example, maybe your activity tracker showed you spent around 5-6 hours a week fiddling with the settings on your WordPress. Your productivity sinks when it comes to technical tasks, so delegate it. In fact, there’s likely an expert out there who can take care of this task with more speed and efficiency.

Find a WordPress-guru to maintain your blog, delegate the task to them and get 6 hours of your time back!

6 Ways to Save Time as a Freelancer

✅ Shop for new clients in your coworking space.

✅ Re-prioritize and make some compromises.

✅ Keep an activity tracker like RescueTime.

✅ Focus more time on your highest value-yielding tasks.

✅ Dump your least valuable activities.

✅ Outsource the tasks that aren’t efficient uses of your time.

Do you know any other hacks to save time as a freelancer? Comment below!

Don’t forget these time-saving hacks when you need them most! Save this article to your Productivity board on Pinterest for later.

Want more of these great hacks? Download our free growth hacking ebook Hacking Freedom. This eBook contains 22 growth hacks plus a must-have tool guide for freelancers!