Success Through Organization

So, you’re full of great ideas just waiting to get out. In fact, last night, you had a dream which completed that piece of code, writing, art, or whatever you’re working on. You wake up feeling refreshed and like you’re a genius. To celebrate, you grab a little breakfast and meet up with one of your friends to chat about your greatness.

Then you get home and try to remember what you were doing. Fail.

If you like what you do or something is bothering you quite a bit, your brain will often pump the problem through your subconscious to see if it can solve the problem. These answers sometimes come in the form of dreaming about solving the problem or realizing it right after you wake up. So, why can you never remember that great idea you had even minutes after? Because something is going to distract you and make you forget.

One of the greatest and worst things about freelance work is that you’ll be doing different tasks with each project; with that comes excitement and a feeling of freshness each time you sit down to work, but what also tags along is a whole new multitude of frustrating problems that you don’t know how to solve right off the bat.

What’s the best way to keep those brilliant ideas from slipping away throughout the day?

Carry a Notebook

All you need is a pocket-sized notebook and a pen. If you can keep those two things with you at all times, you will become much more productive. All day long, you can jot down notes and ideas that could possibly turn into solutions. If they don’t work? Oh well. It’s always worth ten pages of ideas to extract two lines that help you out.

The reason most people don’t carry a notebook is because they think they can remember a complex idea all day if they try really hard. There are so many thoughts going through your head throughout the day that there’s no way you can keep track of them while paying attention to the task at hand. That’s the whole reason we write stuff down. Another reason people don’t carry a notebook is because they think it makes them look goofy. As a kid, I thought I looked rediculous holding a briefcase, but that’s just because I wasn’t using it right. It was a conscious addition to my body rather than being an extension of it. If it looks natural, no one is going to even notice. The worst reason is because you don’t think you have the time to do it. It’s three seconds to write something down. Just do it.

Speaking of time,

Calendars

To stay employed, you have to show up and do your work. If you’re working with oDesk, you have to boot up and do the work. And you can expect a lot of deadlines. If you use a calendar on your computer (or Google’s calendar, even), you can piece out your work and make sure you’re always on task. It’s like writing unit testing in programming. Boss-man-or-lady asks, “So, what have you been up to all these hours you’ve been paid for?” You can turn around and say, “Well, according to my schedule, over the past week I did this, this, and that. We’re about 70 percent through this project, and it should be completed in four days.”

See how easy that is? You never have to come up with excuses for why you forgot to do something before your deadline. If you do run into problems, then you can show the person hiring you that you were on task until something unexpected came up, and they will be much more understanding than if you just had a mangled file of unreadable, non-working code to show for yourself.

Those cases should be few and far between, though, because you remembered to schedule yourself some time each day to correct unexpected occurrences, and you were even nice enough to provide the person who hired you with a copy of your calendar. You did, didn’t you?

WorkDiary

You spent how many hours designing that splash-screen image? Prove it.

Keep your WorkDiary up to date with notes on what you’re doing, why you’re taking so darn long, and if you completed your tasks for the day. You may be
loathe to keep hopping into that thing to say “Well…uh…it’s not working and I don’t know why,” but at least they know you’re not walking off on a coffee break. If your client has a copy of your calendar and is watching your diary, they can tell when you’re on task instead of having to ask you constantly. That makes everyone happier.

Try to keep the notes short and to the point.

Ex: Debugging clickmebutton function, variables are not unique.

And then: clickmebutton debugged, moving on to ChickenRocket object.

Finally: All tasks completed. On schedule.

Why you should do these things

The reason you’re doing this whole business is to make money, right? Well, here’s a simple set of logic equations to lay it out for you:

Organization = Better Work

Better Work = More Jobs

More Jobs = More Money

Therefore,

You + Organization = You + More Money