January 31st, 2007
Scheduling Projects
It’s easy to overlook the importance of budgeting your time because it seems so simple. You feel like you instinctively know whether or not you have enough time to do a project this week, this month, or at all. In the beginning as your practice is growing, you’ll almost always be right. Sometimes you may find yourself sitting on your hands waiting for work to do. But the word of mouth about your design work starts growing, and eventually you get more and more people calling on you. If you’re anything like me, you suddenly find that you have committed to do two weeks worth of work in the next few days.
First off, it probably isn’t entirely your fault. Maybe one client dragged their feet on approving a mockup, and another client forgot to tell you that the deadline is actually Friday. But now you’re stuck with a mountain of work that’s going to seriously cut into your sleep time. Just because this mess isn’t entirely your fault, doesn’t mean you can’t take steps to prevent it from happening.
How Much Do You Want to Work?
You should ask yourself what the maximum amount of time you are willing to work each day. After all, that’s one of the perks of being your own boss. Let’s say you don’t want to work more than 8 hours 5 days a week.
How much of that time is actually billable to a client? You probably spend sometime each day answering the phone, marketing your business, keeping abreast of new information about the industry, reading and responding to emails, and a host of other minor tasks that eat up your day. Suppose that adds up to about 2 hours a day, leaving you 6 hours each day that you can charge to a client.
Let’s take a look at those numbers. 6 hours a day is roughly 120 hours a month. If you charge $100/hour that means you’ll be making $12,000 a month. Remember we’re talking about the maximum you are willing to work. You still have to get the clients to fill up 6 hours a day, but this post is about avoiding the problem of having more work than you can handle.
Block It Out
It seems so obvious in retrospect. When I take on a new project, I write it down on my calendar the days that I plan on doing the work. If Project Omega is going to take 18 hours of work, then I can write on my calendar “Project Omega” on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
I’ll admit that blocking out my time on a calendar was not something I was excited about at first. It felt a little too much like having a job. I’m scheduling myself again? Isn’t that a step backwards? First off, it helps to plan the days I’ll be working on a given project, but not what hours. (Although, give that a shot if you want. Maybe that will work for you.)
Blocking out the days has a lot of advantages, though. First it lets you look at your calendar and get an instant projection of how much revenue you have coming in. That by itself is enough to make this practice worthwhile.
It also leaves a good impression on your clients. When they come to you with new work, you can consult your calendar and tell them what time slots you have available. This comes across very professional. When you work with a client for the first time, most of them are afraid that you’re a fly-by-night operation that’s making this design business thing up as you go along. Anything you can do to assure them you take this work seriously will go a long way toward putting them at ease.
Preparing For the Unexpected
If one of your clients had an emergency, you want to be able to help them out right away. But you already figured out the maximum amount of time you were willing to work, and you’re already booked up for the week. When a client calls with a broken web site, what do you do?
Well, first of all there will be times when you have to put in unusually long days. You own the business, which means the buck stops with you. That’s not to say, though, that you can’t plan for the inevitable emergency. Modifying the numbers we’ve used up to this point, I would suggest only scheduling 5 hours a day for client work. You have an extra hour each day to handle surprises. That may not always be enough to fix the problem, but it definitely gives you a head start. If that day doesn’t have any surprises, you can always work ahead. Get some of tomorrow’s work done early, or do a little work on your own web site. Heck, maybe you just give yourself the treat of going home early.
