Time Management for Freelance Proofreaders: How to Be More Productive

Time is your most valuable asset. This is true regardless of your profession, your age, your gender, or any other characteristic. Time management for freelance proofreaders is especially important, however, because when you enter into a proofreading contract you are in effect trading your time for money. Not only that but there are a number of supporting tasks you have to address when you own your own business. These are the unpaid administrative tasks you must factor into your rates. 

The bottom line is, the more efficient you are with your time, the more clients you can support, and the larger your income can grow.

There are myriad tools and methods when it comes to time management. For freelance proofreaders in particular, some tools may work better than others. What follows in this blog post are some methods to help you make the most of your time. These include tracking your time, managing your energy levels, organizing work by due dates, making use of checklists, prioritizing by hourly rate, and automating tasks.

Track your time religiously

An old adage in the world of business is, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” When it comes to time management. For freelance proofreaders, nothing could be truer. If you don’t know how long a task takes, how can you know if you are getting more efficient at it?

If you aren’t already, get in the habit of tracking your time. This can be as simple as writing down start and stop times on a piece of paper, creating a tracking spreadsheet, or using an app (if you use a Mac, Klokki Slim is a great option). You can then begin to understand how long certain tasks take, how many hours per week you spend working for each client, and so on.

Once you’ve recorded your time for several weeks, you will have a baseline to work with. You’ll be able to better understand things like which tasks are taking up the majority of your time and what your effective hourly rate is (i.e., the total amount of money you make divided by total hours worked).

Know when you’re in “the zone”

One way to become more efficient while still producing quality work is to do the bulk of your proofreading work when you are “in the zone.” These are the times of day when your energy levels are at their highest. Some people feel more productive in the morning or early afternoon; others are more productive in the evening. Whenever that time is for you, reserve it for your most important or toughest work. You will find that the work is easier, and the finished product will usually be of higher quality.

If you don’t know when your most efficient working times are, take the next few days to become aware of it. You can even perform a basic self-audit by just keeping a notepad and writing down how much energy you have every hour. It likely won’t take very long for you to figure out when your most and least productive times are throughout the day.

Organize your tasks by due dates

To be good at proofreading requires a system. Likewise, running a good proofreading business requires a system, particularly when it comes to managing workflow.

The easiest, simplest way to start managing workflow is by due date. A due date gives you a natural way to prioritize your work, so always ask the client for one. If they do not have a firm date in mind, then assign yourself a reasonable date and work to that.

Along with a due date, using a kanban board on an app like Trello is a simple and effective way to manage your workflow. 

If you don’t work by due dates, the danger is that you will tend to work on whatever is urgent at the time. What’s urgent, however, is not always important, and by jumping from fire to fire you will only wear yourself out, all while very likely leaving truly important work undone.

Use checklists

When it comes to time management for freelance proofreaders, checklists are an amazing tool. Chances are that your client will have certain requirements and preferences in mind when they send you documents to proofread. Once you have identified these, it is very simple to write them down in a checklist that you can reference as you’re working and, importantly, before you send the finished content back. 

The reason checklists should be such an integral part of your proofreading system is that you’re no longer relying on your memory. A written checklist ensures that you never miss a requirement, something your memory can’t do. Additionally, a good checklist can morph over time as new requirements come up. Or, if there is a particular error you find difficult to catch, you can add it to the same checklist as a reminder to intentionally look for it.

The possibilities of how you can use a checklist are endless. Use them to your advantage.

Prioritize by hourly rate

Let’s say you have two proofreading clients who have both assigned you work. In addition, they’ve both provided the same due date. How do you prioritize which one to focus on first? A great rubric is hourly rate.

Simply put, which contract pays more? All else being equal, that’s the contract that you should work on first. This can be tricky since some contracts are project based, but if you are doing a good job tracking your time (see above), you should be able to come up with an effective hourly rate fairly easily.

Once you know which contract pays more, it makes sense to focus a little more on the higher-paying gig. Of course, this is not to suggest you should give a lower-paying client the shaft—this is merely a tool to help you prioritize work. You should give every client excellent support and deliverables, regardless of the contract rate.

Automate, automate, automate

The last tool to help with time management for freelance proofreaders is automation. Note that I’m using the term automation in a loose sense. In simple terms, automation is anything you put in place to take work off your plate.

For example, if you submit for a lot of jobs on a site like Upwork, you could create a proposal template in a Word document. You could then copy and paste this template into the job application and edit it to align with the job description. This saves you from having to start from scratch each time—you’ve partially automated your process.

As another example, if you are active in promoting your proofreading services on social media, you can use a tool to schedule your posts in advance. This allows you to batch out a series of posts for the week or month all at once—more automation.

Additionally, if you spend more time than you’d like on your books, you could hire an accountant to manage it for you. The same goes for taxes—CPAs are a great time- and money-saving resource when it comes to automation. 

Wrapping it up: Time management for freelance proofreaders

There are entire fields of study devoted to time management—much more than can be covered in a single blog post. However, the above tools can help you get started on the journey of becoming a more efficient freelance proofreader. 

First, track your time religiously. Next, learn when your most productive times are and do your most important work then. Take care to organize and prioritize your tasks by due dates and hourly rate while using checklists to keep you on track. Finally, automate any supporting tasks you can.

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