1. Respect Deadlines
When working for clients the most obvious factor that determines
priority and urgency is the deadline. If your project has a deadline
approaching or if you are behind the pace to meet a deadline in the
future, the work should have some added urgency. Meeting deadlines is
an important part of giving your clients a positive experience working
with you, and most designers understand the need to use deadlines in
prioritizing work.
2. Set Milestone Deadlines
If a client project only has a deadline for completion of the
project, make an effort to break down the work that is needed to
complete the project and put it into a few different steps or parts.
Assign each part with a deadline to hit a certain milestone that will
allow you to move on to the next step, and use these self-imposed
deadlines to help with prioritizing. This way rather than just seeing
the final deadline, which may seem like it is far off into the future,
you’ll have a clear understanding of the smaller steps involved in the
project and what you need to do now in order to stay on pace.
These milestone deadlines that you set for yourself may not even need
to be shared with the client, they can be used just to help you stay
on track and to view the big picture of the project. Staying on pace
with a project can also have an impact on everything else that you are
working on. If one project gets off track you may need to dedicate
extra time to getting caught up, which of course takes time away from
your other projects. So staying on course will allow you to prioritize
effectively, rather than being forced to dedicate your time to certain
things because you’re behind.
3. Consider the Consequences
Most likely there will be times where you’re not sure how you’re
going to be able to get everything done. If you have several different
things that are pressing for your attention and you’re not sure how to
prioritize, consider the consequences of not getting the work done or
not meeting the deadline. Chances are, there will be much different
consequences from one task to the next.
For example, you may have a client project that would be disastrous
if you can’t meet the deadline. Maybe the client has other things, such
as a marketing campaign, that are dependent upon you getting your work
done by a specific date. On the other hand, you may have a client
project that has an upcoming deadline, but there really are no
significant consequences if it falls a little behind schedule.
Another factor to consider is your relationship with the client. If
it’s a client that you have worked with for a while and have always met
deadlines, they may be more understanding if you’re struggling to meet
a deadline (depending on the situation). Or you may have a situation
where you’re working with a new client and hoping to get more work or
referrals in the future from this client. In this case, your
relationship with the client may be important enough to shuffle things
around to get the work done.
4. Consider Payment Terms
You’ll also want to take into consideration the impact that a task
will have on getting paid. You may have a project where you will be
paid at various milestones throughout the project. If you are just a
small step away from reaching one of those milestones you may want to
give added priority to getting it done and getting paid.
Likewise, there may be a situation where a client has already paid
for your services and you just need to complete the work. Completing
this client’s work may take priority since they have already paid for
your time.
If you’re a freelancer you’ll always need to be considering your cash
flow situation. So taking into consideration the situation with money
and how/when payment will be made will help you to know what you need
to be working on to keep your business functioning smoothly.
5. Consider Time Required
There may be times when you have two or more equally urgent tasks
that are competing for your attention. However, although they are
equally urgent they may not require the same amount of time to
complete. My preference is to prioritize the tasks that will take less
time to complete so that I can get it crossed off my list and be able
to focus more effectively on the remaining tasks.
6. Set Monthly Goals and Work Backwards
Setting goals can be very helpful for determining what needs to go on
your to-do list. This process is made a little bit easier if you take a
look at the big picture before setting your to-do list for a
particular day. Try starting with monthly goals of what needs to be
done. Then look at the specific actions or tasks that need to be done
in order to reach this goal. For the first week of the month take the
most urgent actions, those with deadlines and those that are
foundational for other tasks, and put them onto a to-do list for the
week. Then you can plan your week more effectively by splitting them up
and setting certain things that need to get done each day.
This can be a much more effective way of prioritizing tasks than
simply trying to decide what to work on for a particular day without
really giving much though to the big picture. With weekly and monthly
to-do lists in addition to a daily list you’ll be able to see how each
task impacts the other things on your list, and priorities tend to
clearly emerge.
7. Schedule a Percentage of Your Time for Personal Projects
There are other tasks that are important aside from just working on
client projects. Things like working through tutorials, reading a book
on a topic that you’d like to learn more about, re-designing your
portfolio site, maintaining a blog, etc. often get pushed to the back
burner because they don’t seem to have the same urgency as other things
on your to-do list. In the long run though, these types of personal
projects and opportunities for development or improvement are very
important.
The best way to make sure that you get time to work on these things
is to prioritize them by setting aside time in your schedule. You can
decide that you’ll dedicate 10% of your time (or some other amount) to
working on projects like this, and set aside time each week to do
something for your own improvement. If you don’t set aside the time,
most likely you won’t get around to it since other things will always
come up.
