Keeping Time On Your Side

“Alice sighed wearily. ‘I think you might do something better with the time,’ she said, ‘than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers.’
‘If you knew Time as well as I do,’ said the Hatter, ‘you wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s him.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Alice.
‘Of course you don’t,’ said the Hatter, tossing his head contemptuously. ‘I dare say you never even spoke to Time!’”
–Lewis Carroll, from Alice in Wonderland

In This Issue:

Keeping Time On Your Side
by Monica Day

I’ve always had an aversion to accounting for my time. It’s one of the character traits that makes me largely “unemployable” in a regular office setting. I had a lot of excuses – see if you’ve used any of these yourself:

Also, I always knew my work habits were scattered – and I suffered from procrastination – more than I ever wanted anyone else to know. So keeping track of time forced me to look my worst habit square in the eye. Or worse, reveal it to others.

So for years, I imagined that being self-employed would be the best way to avoid being accountable to the clock. Or to anyone but myself.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. And if you’re under the same illusion, please allow me to shatter it for you today.

The problem with a deadline-driven business is the stress involved in delivering a high-quality of work on the agreed-upon timeframe. To do this, though, you have to be willing to really look at how you’re spending your time.

If you discover you have bad work habits…fix them. If research takes up more time than it should…get better at it. If you often get stumped coming up with a headline and lead or a big idea…brush up on your skills and shortcuts in this area.

As your skills improve, you’ll increase your income… and your daily work life go more smoothly.

As soon as you start booking copywriting assignments, you’ll see exactly what I mean. It’s probably the first hurdle new copywriter’s face. Setting reasonable fees and deadlines depends on a complicated maze of factors, such as:

Granted, you’ll have more control over some of these factors than others. Accurately tracking your time will allow you to exercise as much control as possible in the areas where you can, and grant you more flexibility in dealing with the factors that are out of your hands.

Know that at first, everything will take you longer than you imagine. A good rule of thumb when you make a promise to a client is to make a conservative estimate of how long something will take you – double it – and give them that date. If you beat it, you look good…but your goal is to simply improve your odds of meeting the deadline.

The bottom line is this…

Keeping track of time might feel like a ball and chain to you. I know it did to me. But it is actually the very key to your freedom.

When you master your time…when you know how long it takes you to accomplish certain tasks…when you are able to improve your skills in ways that help you make better use of your time…you are no longer a slave to the clock. You are the master.

And isn’t that the whole point of becoming a freelance copywriter in the first place?

Resource Referral: Just A Few Spots Left

Speaking of tracking your time…the time to get registered for Bootcamp is at hand. No more procrastinating, hemming and hawing, making excuses, hand-wringing about where you’ll get the money to go, you know the drill!

It’s time to decide once and for all if you’re willing to take this next step to solidify your copywriting career. Because we just had a call with our friends at AWAI today and discovered that they are very close to being completely sold out! And they’ve already added as many extra spaces as they can – the fire code of the hotel simply won’t allow any more. So when they’re gone, they’re gone. For real.

Last week I was part of a teleconference where past Bootcamp attendees talked about what we’ve learned…and why we keep coming back again and again. In the last 10 minutes of the call guest speaker Joe Vitale called in to give a preview of his talk and upcoming book – which will debut at Bootcamp! If you are at all serious about becoming a freelance copywriter…you really don’t want to miss this event.

Krista and I will be there, and we’ll be leading peer review groups. We’ve reserved our spaces for Copy Protégé readers only…and there are only nine more left. So if you want to be in our peer review group, make sure you register through our link – and go ahead and send us an email to let us know – and we’ll make sure you get in.

If you’re ready to register, click here. If you want to learn more about Bootcamp, and see exactly why I’m such a big Bootcamp cheerleader, click here for my full letter. Oh, I almost forgot…the early bird special price ends on August 1st and they are not going to extend it this year. So really, it’s time. Do it today.

Quick Copy Tip: 101 Uses For An Old-Fashioned Egg Timer

In these days of Blackberries, iPhones and the like, tracking your time can tax your technological prowess. But sometimes, less is more.

I get a strange feeling of satisfaction by using an old-fashioned egg timer. I picked this habit up from my daycare provider a few years back. She used it as a brilliant tool for refereeing fights between toddlers over sharing toys. The little tykes had no concept of 15 minutes, and a scuffle would inevitably break out when it was time to give up the toy. But magically, when she would set the egg timer, and they could hear the bell go off, they rarely protested the switch.

How Pavlovian…

So I tried it myself. And strangely enough, the ticking sound in the background is a lot like the metronome to a musician. It spurs me along in my work. And then, the bell announces that another 15 minutes has passed. I jot down how I’ve spent that block and crank the knob again. Try it. You might like it too.