Thinking of becoming a freelancer or contractor? Wondering what you need to get you started? Or been doing it for years and want do it better?

Put together in their own time by a growing team of experienced freelancers, contractors and authors, this site brings you every hint, tip, podcast interview and step-by-step guide you'll need to get your business started or your business smarter.

What’s personal branding all about? Is it important? What does it mean? Where do I start? Do I really need a strong identity or even a logo for my freelancing business? Is it really necessary to make ME stand out from the competition?

Expert, Al Welsh, has had years of experience within some of London’s top advertising agencies and kicks the debate off by starting from basics…

Your Brand - your organisation’s most valuable asset!

Apart from the product or service itself that you’re offering, getting the branding right is perhaps the most important thing you’ll be doing. Your brand may well end up being your organisation’s most valuable asset. The other massively important aspect is your particular target market and what makes them tick?

You need to start by thinking very carefully about what makes your brand distinct from the competition. It may be that you’re filling a gap in the market, in which case you’re the first, it’s obviously a massive advantage. Or that you offer superior customer service. Whatever it is, your branding should echo your core strengths and values and be distinct from your competitors.

A memorable name and logo is required

You’ll need a great name that’s memorable, a relevant and original logo that can work in any situation, a distinctive corporate identity and insightful, fresh, compelling advertising. All these aspects are touch points for your brand.

In today’s crowded and highly competitive world a distinctive brand is an absolute must. As we get on with our lives we’re bombarded with thousands of messages on a daily basis. A person can only retain five a day. Apart from being rushed off their feet people are really having to tighten their belts, things are tough so good solid branding is vital.

Originally brands were simple labels of ownership. But today it’s what they do for people that matters most, how they reflect and engage them, how they define their aspirations and enable them to do more. In the very early days of marketing adverts simply featured a product, its benefits and some branding. But things are much more complex and competitive today. There’s little discernable difference between one product or service and another. So originality in branding and advertising communication is often the only real difference. It’s a mistake to copy another successful brand as all you’re doing is remaining invisible and reinforcing their brand.

In advertising there are two main categories, brand adverts and product specific adverts. But what people remember most is the brand’s personality and the feeling they get from the communication. People buy into brands, they say something about themselves. In some ways the brand can be almost more important than the product itself.

Fancy setting a real-life goal? Something that you will be so pleased about for years to come if you actually go and do it. Could it be as daring as climbing Mount Everest or possibly building a school in Africa? How about something a little closer to home that so many people enter into, do and never forget the elation of completing. How about doing the marathon!

Personal training expert and many times marathon runner, Helen Wilkinson, maps out the Top 10 tips that will prepare you for what is an extreme physical and psychological challenge:

Top 10 Tips

1. Look after your body. Visit your GP and get the all clear. It is worthwhile to have a medical check up whether this is your first marathon or if you are a seasoned runner. Eat well - good nutrition is essential to fuel your body for training. Follow a balanced diet with plenty of complex carbohydrates and consider taking a good multi vitamin supplement. Sleep well - make sure you get plenty of sleep and rest. This is when your body recovers and strengthens from the training you have undertaken. Drink lots of water (about 2 litres a day) and try to reduce your alcohol intake. This will give you the best chance of productive training and a good performance on race day. Get a deep tissue / sports massage as often as possible. This will help you to avoid any injury and ease out sore muscles, as well as aiding recovery it’s something to look forward to- a treat for all your hard work!
2. Get the right kit. The most important part of a runner’s armoury is their running shoes. There are specialist running shops and podiatrists who will be able to advise you on suitable footwear and remember the most expensive shoes are not always the right shoes. On race day your shoes should be worn in, but not worn out!
3. Get a training programme and beware of too much too soon. Beginner runners especially can encounter injuries if they set the bar too high. There are numerous books and magazines that give specific training programmes for all levels of running such as Runners World and Running Fitness. Choose the programme that is realistic for you, in terms of your lifestyle and time you can commit to, as well as your fitness level and follow it. Mileage is the key - your long run is the most important element of your training. It is vital to your success and will boost your weekly mileage which is important too. Remember you are training for distance above speed. Keep a running journal- logging your sessions, allowing you to keep track of your progress and mileage. It will also help you to keep motivated as well as highlighting any pitfalls. Commitment and goal; make a commitment to your training, with a goal in mind. Ideally start specific training 6 months before marathon race date. This means 6 months of commitment from yourself to yourself to achieve your goal! Have some idea of a time you would like to aim for as this will give you a focus for your training.
4. Learn how to, and importantly, when to stretch. Make sure you stretch after every session and especially after your long run. Stretching correctly can make all the difference - have a chat with a personal trainer or a physiotherapist regarding stretching regimes.
5. If you are unfortunate and experience an injury, seek advice ASAP. The earlier you seek intervention from a sports physician or physiotherapist the quicker they will be able to identify the cause of your injury and begin intervention strategies. Don’t blindly train through injury or illness as this will set you back even more.
6. Find a running buddy or join a running club for those long training runs. It can be of enormous help to run with someone else. Importantly on those wet, windy dark winter mornings when you would rather roll over in your warm bed the thought of letting a running partner down can be a great incentive to get up!
7. Discover cross training and strength training. This is an important adjunct to your training. Also if you are injured having access to alternative training methods that do not stress the injured area such as swimming, rowing or the elliptical cross trainer can maintain your cardiovascular levels whilst you recover from injury.
8. Increase your core stability. Athletes in the know such as Paula Radcliffe incorporate core stability regimes such as Pilates into their training. This type of training can greatly improve your running and help prevent injuries.
9. Gain race experience. This will break up your training programme and give you some indication of what to expect for the big day! It will help you prepare for the nerves, adrenaline and other race day emotions, as well as giving you the opportunity to practice your race day routine. Two or three races would be ideal, ranging from 10k to half marathons, but no longer and not within a month of the marathon itself.
10. Learn to congratulate yourself; there will be days when you feel like throwing in the towel when your runs don’t go to plan or you are injured. Running a marathon is a fantastic experience whether London New York or a local one and entitles you to membership of an elite club. Whether you are an elite or beginner runner, learn to pat yourself on the back.

Part 2 of an interview with Steve Crouch of SRC Chartered Accountants. Here Steve tells us about the types of expenses freelancers can claim such as those associated with working from home and some more general things to look out for.

Topics Covered:

• The expenses a freelancer can claim;
• Expenses associated with working from home;
• Motor expenses;
• Expenses related to working from rented accommodation;
• Insuring your equipment;
• Public liability insurance;
• Taking on employees;
• Health and Safety;
• Taking on contractors of your own;
• What should freelancers look for in an accountant?

 

 #6: Five Things you always wanted to ask your accountant - part 2 [17:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (57)

In my last post I explained how to use the management tool Remember the Milk and how its important to write down everything you need to do. In this post I’m going to explain how you can take things further, and programme into your routine regular tasks which ensure mundane but essential stuff like cleaning and bill paying gets taken care of. Once again, I’ll explain how you can use Remember The Milk to manage this, but you can easily substitute in another system.

The problem - You never remember (or find time) to do chores

Chores are boring, but essential. If you don’t clear out your desk of papers once a week, pay the bills, hoover every now and again, run some virus checks on your PC and do the other mundane things in life you’ll end up with a messy desk, a dirty working environment, nowhere to live and a virus ridden PC. You won’t be able to work as effectively and your mind will probably feel cluttered as well. Up until recently I had this problem, and whilst I sort of kept on top of things, I was always concerned that there was something I should have been doing, and that made me more stressed.

The solution - set up each chore as a recurring task

When you see a chore that needs to be done, e.g. checking your bank account online, changing the bed, or just doing laundry, think about how often you need to do it. Is it weekly, monthly, every 2 weeks? When you’ve decided, set up the task in your preferred system and set it to repeat on the time scale you’ve chosen.

Setting up the tasks in Remember the Milk

I use Remember The Milk to do this, since I find their feature “repeat after” incredibly useful. What “repeat after” does is ensures the repeat time only kicks in once you’ve marked a task as completed. So if you want to change the bed every two weeks, and are then 4 days late in changing it, once you’ve marked it as completed it will be a full 14 days before you’re reminded again, rather than 10.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Set up the task as a normal task
2. Edit the task and under the “Repeat” option type in how often you want the task to repeat. You might want to consult their syntax guide, but you won’t go far wrong with “After a week” or “After 14 days” etc.
3. If you want something to repeat regardless of when you complete the task (could be useful with bills, if your late one month you don’t want to be late every month) make sure you omit the “after” keyword
   

Handy hints for managing your regular tasks

Don’t do tasks unnecessarily often

I used to check my bank account for false transactions every week, but I realised that once a fortnight was ample. It a waste of your time if you find yourself doing something too regularly. Think about each task and ask yourself if its really important than it be done this often. If not, alter the time scale and postpone the task.

Don’t be tempted to leave tasks out of the list just because someone else might do it

For a long time I didn’t bother putting cleaning the bathroom down as a regular task. I share a house so there’s other people to do this stuff too. Problem was, nobody else remembered either. Now the task is in there, and I check to see if anyone else has done it. If not, I’ll do it, or ask someone to do it, if they have I just mark it as complete.

Don’t be a slave to your chores

Most of my cleaning is set to recur every Thursday, but if I’m going out on Thursday there’s nothing wrong with doing it the day before or the day after. What you’ve got now is a reminder, not a rule.

Isn’t all this overkill?

Well yes and no. If you manage to take care of all these tasks by yourself, then your probably so well organised you don’t need such a system - your already doing all this by yourself.

I’m not well organised though, so I either do something too often because I’m not sure when I last did it, or completely forget to do certain things. This system takes the stress out of regular chores, it ensures nothing gets forgotten, and that lets me relax and stop worrying about what I should be doing. I program everything in, and once its done, I forget about that task for good. I just do it automatically, when I’m told. Its been the single best system I’ve introduced ever.

That’s it for this months advice, next month I’ll explain how I minimise information overload.

Us freelancers are prone to work overload! I have phases when my mind is like the inside of a very full washing machine on at full tilt. Or I have a worry that won’t go away and I fret at it like a dog with a bone. Result? Insomnia! That maelstrom of tossing and turning, staring up at a darkened ceiling, scowling into the back of your loved one’s deeply asleep neck and huffing and puffing in a state of mental frustration - then waking up next morning with a face like a bloodhound with a hangover!

While I can’t guarantee these tips for overcoming insomnia will work for you, you are likely to get some benefit somewhere along the line. So read on:

Supplements & herbs

Some insomniacs use teas or herbal tinctures made from valerian, passiflora, wild lettuce, chamomile, lavender, hops and passion flower. Valerian has undergone the most studies and appears to be modestly effective. Try Potter’s Nod Off.· Take the supplement 5HTP (5-Hydroxytryptophan). 5HTP is a compound created in the body which is used to regulate serotonin levels in brain and central nervous system (serotonin makes us relaxed!). It is the effects on the levels of serotonin in the body that gives 5HTP its active effects. It is reported that modern hectic living – everyday stress, worries and bad eating habits lowers serotonin levels in the body.

Nutrition

Eat a large lunch and have a light evening meal at least three hours before bed.· Reduce the number of cups of coffee, tea or cola drinks you drink, especially later on in the day. · Only drink alcohol in moderation. It may bring on sleepiness, but will tend to cause early waking. · Pomegranates are believed to be able to help insomniacs sleep.· Warm milk contains high levels of tryptophan, a natural sedative. Adding honey to warm milk helps get the tryptophan in your system faster.

Preparing for sleep

Regular daytime exercise can help you to feel more relaxed and tired at bedtime. However, you should not do exercise near to bedtime if you have insomnia.· Mentally dealing with the day’s unfinished business is also helpful. Writing down any worries to deal with the next day may help to clear them from the mind and prevent them re-surfacing in the early hours.

Relaxation techniques aim to reduce your mental and physical arousal before going to bed. There are a number of techniques. For example, progressive muscular relaxation has been shown to help promote sleep. This technique consists of tensing and relaxing various muscle groups in sequence.· The bedroom should be a quiet, relaxing place to sleep. It should not be too hot, cold, or noisy. Earplugs and eye shades may be useful if you are sleeping with a snoring or wakeful partner. Make sure the bedroom is dark with good curtains to stop early morning sunlight. Don’t use the bedroom for activities such as work, eating or television. Consider changing your bed if it is old, or not comfortable.

Hide your alarm clock under your bed. Many people will ‘clock watch’ and this does not help you to get off to sleep. · It is pointless going to bed until you feel sleepy. Ignore the clock - time is the insomniac’s curse. · Using aromatherapy, including jasmine oil, lavender oil, mahabhringaraj and other relaxing essential oils in a warm bath may help induce a state of restfulness.· Stop smoking – nighttime breathing problems are more likely in smokers. Do not smoke before bed or if you wake in the middle of the night.

In the Buddhist tradition, people suffering from insomnia or nightmares may be advised to meditate on “loving-kindness”, or metta. This practice of generating a feeling of love and goodwill is claimed to have a soothing and calming effect on the mind and body. This is claimed to stem partly from the creation of relaxing positive thoughts and feelings, and partly from the pacification of negative ones. In the Mettā Sutta, Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, tells the gathered monks that easeful sleep is one benefit of this form of meditation.· Listen to soothing music. · Work out how many hours sleep you can manage with before daytime sleepiness becomes a problem. Becoming unnecessarily stressed over insomnia can lead to a vicious cycle.

Pay attention to your body rhythms. Try to get into a routine of wakefulness during the day and sleepiness at night. The body becomes used to rhythms or routines. If you keep to a pattern, you are more likely to sleep well. Therefore no matter how tired you are, do not sleep or nap during the day. It’s best to go to bed only when sleepy-tired in the late evening - Switch the light out as soon as you get into bed. Always get up at the same time each day, seven days a week, however short the time asleep. Use an alarm to help with this. Resist the temptation to ‘lie-in’ even at weekends.

Still awake?

If you cannot get off to sleep after 20-30 minutes - get up. Go into another room, and do something else such as reading something mundane or watching harmless TV. Do something absorbing and distracting (nothing to do with work), ideally involving the eyes and hands, perhaps do a jigsaw, make models. Rather pointless, but so is insomnia, and is better than lying in bed trying to listen to relaxation tapes. Go back to bed when sleepy.· Don’t worry if it is 6.00 am, you are still awake doing that ridiculous jigsaw and have to get up at 7.00 am for work or to get the kids up. You’ll be sleepy that day, so minimize driving. No daytime naps, but try and stay awake until about 10.00 pm. The good news is that sound sleep that night is almost guaranteed.

Treating insomnia with more sleep loss can be very effective - it is rather like a homeopathic approach - aggravate the illness a little.

Therapies

Specific sleep therapy includes cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), which deals with misconceptions about sleep such as believing that frequent short naps during the day are good for you.· Traditional Chinese medicine has included treatment for insomnia throughout its history. A typical approach may utilize acupuncture, dietary and lifestyle analysis, herbology and other techniques, with the goal of resolving the problem at a subtle level. Although these methods have not been scientifically proven, some insomniacs report that these remedies are sufficient to break the insomnia cycle without the need for sedatives and sleeping tablets.

Author’s favourites!

• Vogel’s Night-time Flower Essence or Bach Flower Rescue Remedy.
• Have a bonk. Your partner may or may not appreciate being woken up or drawn back from the brink of unconsciousness – but it’s worth a try!
• Creating the synopsis for a steaming, roller-coaster of a novel.
• Remembering the names of all the people I knew at school.
• Several complete breathing cycles and relaxing all the muscles in my body.
• Kicking the cats off the bed (I’ve got four – so the bed can get very over-crowded)
• Thumping my husband until he turns over and stops snoring!

If you’re still awake after having read this fascinating list of possibilities to help you fall into oblivion, then I suggest you try reading War and Peace or The Grandfather Clock Maintenance Manual or Teach Yourself Latin or Working with Concrete or… sweet dreams!

Laurel Alexander

Stressed, clients permanently on your case and a to-do list as long as the M1?

It can happen to all of us, but it’s all too easy to get to the point where you literally do not know which task to do next, as each and every one is screaming “I’m a critical important task….Do me first!”

Now there are of course a number of excellent ways to manage your time, as is being discussed by Mark Kirby in his excellent ‘Managing Your Time’ series within Freelance Advisor, and I’d wholeheartedly advocate going down that route but if you mind is whirring at all times of the day and night, how about giving it a holiday?

Am I talking real holiday, which would be nice, or something else? Imagine if you can for a second, that peaceful part of any holiday, almost after a week when your brain has finally started to slow down and realised that those ‘to-do’s’ that keep popping up really can wait till you get back? Starting to remember that blissful feeling?

Well what if I told you that you could experience something possibly even better if you put a little time and effort into it? I’ll get straight to the point: Meditation. Scared and ready to click away? Don’t be. It’s taken me quite a few years to realise the benefits of meditation until I was dragged kicking and screaming down to a meditation class by a mate of mine. One hour later though, after a few hints, tips and techniques and boy, I felt exactly like I’d been on a two week holiday…except I hadn’t left London and in total it had taken one and a half hours!

Meditation Evening Classes

Now, do I detect a reluctance to go to an evening class with some strange people? Well if you did make the effort to go along to an evening class you’d almost certainly find it to be welcoming, friendly and full of people exactly like you. The other key thing to point out is that there are so many courses out there that are non-religious and cite themselves as ‘non-denominational’. If anything fractionally religious makes you run a mile make sure you double check.

Meditation Podcasts

Is there any other way of getting a taster of this ‘holiday for the mind’ thing? Absolutely! It was really on a whim that I decided to search iTunes to see if there were any meditation podcasts and I found ‘The Meditation Podcast.com’. I downloaded the very first episode that very evening and tried it out. With a little bit of focus I listened to the careful guidance of Jesse and Jean Stern and 26 minutes later, once the meditation exercise had finished, I felt great. My overly active ‘chattering’ mind was for the first time in years calm. Not only did I sleep well that night but tasks the following day’s tasks were done methodically, focused on and each one finished before I moved to the next. How did I achieve this? Simple. My mind wasn’t continually fretting about the other 16+ important tasks of the day and making me lose concentration.

Go to www.themeditationpodcast.com or iTunes and download the first or all of the series for free, find yourself a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed (turn off that mobile) and treat yourself.

Ok, so you’ve got your freedom and work for yourself but are you starting to find it’s all work and no play?

Increasingly and particulary for freelancers and contractors projects often exceed intial expectations, or the drought of the early years has instilled a ‘grab it while you can’ mentality and there is simply too much to do!

What happens is that work spills into evenings and then weekends and before you know it, you have no life at all and your friends have almost forgotten who you are!

Is there another way? Well yes, over time experience helps you to pretty accurately gauge project size and not take too much on but there’s also some merit in replacing a few of those work goals with life goals. A few examples?

• One afternoon off a week
• 2 sessions at the gym per week
• Learn to meditate
• Run the marathon

Could that old adage of ‘there’s more to life than work’ be ringing a bell as you read this?

This new section of Freelance Advisor promises to challenge your over work-cooked mind and help you to start looking at the possibilites at obtaining that true Nirvana; a work / life balance!

You can think of your website as the modern-day equivalent of the Victorian calling card. Before your prospective client decides whether you’re worth talking to, they’ll have a good nose around your site.

And they might be asking themselves:

• How professional is this organisation?

• Do they have the products or expertise I’m looking for?

• Will I get on with them?

• Can I trust them to do a good job?

Your website won’t close deals for you - unless it’s an e-commerce site. But it can smooth the sales process and cut your sales costs. How? By building a relationship with your reader, and by filtering out the time wasters. And if you can get your online tone of voice to chime with your real-life personality too, then you’re on to a winner.

It’s worth getting (temporarily) obsessed with your website. A few months of revisiting and perfecting your content will help you get clear on what exactly you’re offering, how you’re special and how you want to relate to your audiences.

What are visitors looking for?

As a freelancer, chances are that you’re selling your skills as opposed to shifting widgets… If your target clients are….

• medium to large companies – someone in the company will view your site first before drawing up a shortlist. And if they think they’re onto a winner, they’ll want to send their bosses a link to show how good you are. That’s where case studies really shine.

• Consumers – if you’re selling your expertise to the public they will be pretty swayed by your site’s surface appeal and design

• Experts – they won’t be seduced by look’n’feel. Get your facts spot on and name your sources. Don’t fudge it.

10 foolproof ways to build trust

1. Link to external sources of facts Don’t expect people to take what you say on trust. Even if your visitors don’t follow these links, they’ll appreciate your thoroughness.
2. Show you’ve got bricks and mortar Reassure your readers with a postal address. And consider including a photo of your premises – unless, of course, you work from your front room.
3. Prove you know your stuff Your credentials are the most important trust-builder for clients and referral partners who are experts in your area. Beef up your About us page and include logos and links to trade associations and professional bodies you belong to. You may feel a bit silly and get flashbacks to brownies or cubs. But you’re simply showing readers that you’re plugged into the zeitgeist and industry best practice. Include case studies to show how you helped a named client overcome a business challenge. Telling a story like this allows your reader to put themselves in the client’s shoes. So you’re getting your reader emotionally involved and wanting to use your services before they’ve even met you.
4. Prove you’re honest Name the key people behind the business and make them sound authentic and personable. Really work on your biography to ensure it sells up your major achievements. Ask your associates if you can include their bios on your site too. Consider including your photos too. People buy people – and that’s doubly the case for a one-person outfit.
5. Make contacting you easy Hiding away your contact details makes you look like a recluse or a shady character. Include your phone number and an email address. Consider putting your phone number in a prominent position on every page – I’ve got mine in the header banner for example. If you’re worried about email spam, use [at] instead of the @ sign in your email address. A stark online contact form makes you look like you’re hovering in cyberspace. People may wonder whether their email will reach you, and whether you’ll answer it. Plus they may prefer to call to suss you out first – especially if they’re stressed or upset and looking for support. If you’re a limited company by law now you have to include your company number and registered address somewhere on your site.
6. Get a professional-looking design This is especially important if you’re selling to consumers. About half of their first impressions will centre on superficial look’n’feel – rather than on what you say.
7. Make your site easy to use and useful Map out your site before you get it built. Look for inspiration from a rival site you find easy to use – how do they organise their content? Give away free tips if you can. You’ll build up goodwill, present an expert, customer-friendly image, and you’ll whet their appetite for more. If you’re selling online, give really detailed product information– far more than your competitors do if you can. This is also fab for your search engine rankings.
8. Update your content often Regular updates reassure visitors that you’re still in business and that you’re on the ball. Google will like you too.
9. Cut out the sales speak Don’t nauseate your readers with flashing promo boxes, cheesy ads, capital letters and shouty bolded text. Tone down those adjectives and if you can’t back up a claim then cut it out. Your words will sound all the stronger for this pruning, believe me.
10. Check for typos and broken links Minor errors can look sloppy. Print out your content and get a sharp-eyed friend or a professional copywriter / editor to proof read it. If you’re DIY proof reading, print out your copy, leave it to rest overnight and read the copy from back to front. Try it - it works!

See also:

These top 10 headings are taken from a Stanford University study on what makes websites credible. So you see – I wasn’t making it up! http://credibility.stanford.edu/guidelines/index.html

In my first post I introduced you to the web application remember the milk (RTM) and to David Allen’s GTD methodology.

In this post I will explain the most basic principle of GTD - write everything down so you don’t forget stuff - and how to do that efficiently using remember the milk and some alternative applications. I will also explain how to organise your lists
using due dates and priorities. Its high level stuff, and if you know it already don’t worry, I’ll be going into more advanced stuff later in the series.

The problem - you can’t remember what you should be doing

• You know there’s lots of stuff you need to do, but your not sure exactly what
• You think of things you have to do, then forget about them soon after
• You constantly worry you’ve forgotten do do something

David Allen of GTD fame describes how one of the biggest problems people have is that in the back of their minds there’s always stuff they need to do, but they aren’t sure what. This causes stress, and slows down their productivity.

The solution - write everything down

David suggests a simple solution - record everything you need to do. When you think of something that needs doing, record it somewhere. That’s the very least you should be doing. Once its written down, you can forget about it, and that frees up your mind to focus on other stuff. This isn’t the same as a traditional to do list, as its a massive ongoing list of tasks, rather than something you do every now and again.

Don’t forget, this isn’t just about work related stuff, if you need to buy a pizza - write it down, if you need to flea the cat - write it down.

Alternative ways of recording your tasks

Taking David’s principle, I experimented for a year with different methods of recording my tasks, you could try any of these:

1. Firstly I got a notebook and wrote everything down in there, crossing it off when it was done. Then, I lost my notebook.
2. I then started listing everything in a desktop application - iGTD, and carried around a very small notebook to write stuff down in when I was out and about. Problem was, I couldn’t access iGTD at work, and it kept crashing leaving my data at risk. Also, I kept forgetting my notebook.
3. Finally I started using RTM, which lets you access your lists from any internet point. You won’t lose your data, even if the desktop crashes, and with my iPhone I can add notes from anywhere. Thats worked out best for me.

There’s one problem with my preffered RTM and the iPhone method - what if you don’t have an iPhone (pretty likely I guess). Actually, I didn’t have one either when I first used RTM, their iPhone app was the reason I purchased my iPhone. If you don’t want to take things to that level, you can try to combine the notebook with RTM, transferring stuff in and out of the notebook when you get home.

By the way, some alternatives to RTM are Sandy, iGTD (Mac only), ta-da list - and plenty more! Find the one you like best, or if that seems like too much work, just go for RTM. It works fine for me!

Take action - how you can start recording stuff right now

This is my method, by all means find your own - but if your not sure where to start, try this one and then find out whats best for you. Don’t forget the aim - everything you need to do must be recorded. Thats all that counts.

Get started:

1. Sign up to RTM, or another system. Its totally free, unless you want to use the iPhone app which is $25 a year
2. Buy a small notebook - or an iPhone :-)
3. Ensure you start doing the following…

When you get a task:

Whenever you think of or are given something to do - write it down, either in your notebook or on your phone or whatever - just write it down.

When you get online, open up RTM, and add the stuff you wrote down last as tasks. Don’t worry too much about locations, tags and categorys at this stage, just use the inbox for now.

If AND ONLY IF there is a due date for this task, enter it in.

If there is not a due date, don’t put one - don’t make due dates up. Some things, such as a library book due back, have a very real due date - if you skip it, you pay! Other things, such as calling your sister, don’t. You should do it quite soon, but nothing too bad will happen if you don’t (apart from a frosty xmas meal perhaps). Instead mark them with a priority of either 1 (urgent), 2 (medium) or 3 (less urgent). To do that in RTM, select the task by checking the checkbox next to the task, and press the key 1, 2, or 3 as appropriate.

Each morning

Go into RTM and write down the tasks that MUST be completed today - i.e. their due dates are today or tommorow. Then select some of the tasks from the priorities that you think you should do today.

During the day

Do the tasks you MUST do. Do them first. Then work through the things you should do.

At the end of the day

Mark the tasks you have finished as completed.

What’s next?

Next month you should be comfortable with your chosen system, and we shall move on to more advanced stuff. I’ll explain how to group tasks, and use RTM to manage your projects. Then I’ll explain how to ‘programme yourself’ to do repetitive tasks each week, allowing you to increase your productivity and get more done than you ever thought possible!

It’s one of the most common questions asked by freelancers or contractors, should I setup as a sole trader or setup a Ltd company?

As discussed in the podcast ‘5 things you always wanted to ask an Accountant - part I’ the following simple online calculator tells you in seconds, precisely!Simply enter your anticipated earnings if you are just about to jump into freelancing or you are already a soletrader and have a pretty good idea anyway. If you don’t have any idea, just try a figure you think you can achieve and enter it in:Crunch calculatorFormulated using a complex spreadsheet from SRC Accounting, this will show a direct comparison between the tax incurred if you are a Ltd Company to that if you are a Soletrader. Assuming it is past the ‘break points’ it will show a saving if you operate a Ltd company.All in all, this simple calculator should prove to be exceptionally useful to all who use it on freelanceadvisor.