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I’ve been in business for myself for two weeks now. My original intent was to blog at least once (if not twice) a week to document this new journey. But as you know, finding the time to create articulate, coherent posts isn’t always easy. So let’s start there. Time.

Right out of the gate I was aware that time management was going to be key. We all know people running their own business. And a consistent thread always seems to be issues with time. Either poorly spent or just not enough of it. And with billable hours being my bread & butter it’s not something I can afford to be lax about. I want the time I spend on a project to be focused & productive. And being right brained only means I’m easily distracted by anything shinny.

So a few things that have helped thus far:

1. Rescue Time
A very slick web application that will track the types of work/tasks you’re doing and give you hourly updates. You can also set goals, view time spent by category and even see what sites you spend the most time on. And sign up for a single user is free. Rescue Time.

2. Scheduling
This sounds like a no brainer. But not always so easy to do. The first thing i did was by a planner (I’m in the no iphone camp at the moment). Moleskin has a very cool, cheap weekly planner that gives you room to write notes next to the day’s events as well as a line list of days in the month (shown in the image above). I’ll write more about project specific scheduling in another post.

3. Expectation
Not all my time is spent designing. Accounting, marketing & client relations are just a few of the things that can easily take up the majority of a day. This is one of the reasons I’ve resisted going into business for myself in the past. And still the reality of it was a shock. It’s easy to feel like I haven’t accomplished something If I’m not working the design portion of my business. So it becomes vital for me to map out my expectations for each week/day. With out this I’m a ship lost at sea.

So I’m hoping to get more in depth on these topics and other. More to come!