Recently, in Pop Club, I hosted a workshop all about how to organize your brain and your freelance business. Today, I’m sharing the process I use every time I’m feeling overwhelmed or like I want a fresh start.
Let’s just get right into it. Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting and staying organized.
1. Brain Dump
The first thing I do is open up this template (or just my notes app) and brain dump into a few categories:
- Things I want to change in my biz
- what’s not working?
- what’s my ideal solution for what’s not working?
- what do I need to do to reach that ideal?
- Routine tasks I need to keep up with
- marketing
- pitching
- bookkeeping
- My current clients
- deadlines
- routines
- time commitments
- Money goals (and how I can meet them)
- How much do I need to be making? How much do I want to be making?
- How much of each of my services would I need to sell to make that?
- What am I already making?
- Personal goals
Then, I distill them into 5 #1 priority goals so I have a north star to work toward.
P.S. My Rates Calculator might help with your money goals – you can find it in the Freelance Resource Library (it’s included in all of my paid programs like Pop Club & 1:1 coaching OR you can buy it standalone)…
2. Schedule
Now that you know on a high level what’s going on in your business, you can decide how and when you want to run it. This is just to create a skeleton that we can then use to plan.
Ask yourself:
- How and when do you WANT to be available for your clients?
- When will you do your focused work?
- What do you need to do to make your ideal schedule work?
- When will you work ON your biz?
Here’s my current schedule, for example:
Monday | CEO Day (I only work ON my biz)
Tuesday | Calls and small tasks
Wednesday | Focused work: client work ONLY, no calls
Thursday | Calls and small tasks
Friday | Focused work: client work ONLY, no calls
3. To Do
Okay, you’ve got your schedule and your goals. Now, it’s time to figure out the most important tasks and what you actually need to do.
For anything you want to accomplish in the next 3 months, determine:
- recurring tasks (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly)
- client work
- steps you need to take to reach your goals
→ If you can and it’s helpful for you, break things down into smaller tasks.
Then, for each thing on your to-do list, work out:
- how much time each thing will take
- any deadlines
- priority
- Low - would be nice but not urgent
- Medium - stresses me out or semi-time sensitive
- High - makes money or very time sensitive
Once you’ve got all that info, you can add it to your system so you know when and how you’ll get it done.
Pro Tip: Use AI to plan. I input the list I made in this step into Claude with this prompt (fill in the brackets!):
Hi Claude, can you help me make a plan for [time frame]?Here are the details: I work [your hours] with a 1 hour lunch break. I work [days of the week you work]. On [day] and [day], I usually have [#] hours of meetings during which I will not be working on tasks or projects. I’m offline from [your vacation days] but otherwise working every weekday.
I don’t want a time blocked schedule. Instead, I just want you to tell me which tasks to do that day and how long they’ll take. [←remove if you do want time blocking] The tasks you choose should all fit into that day’s hours. Please batch tasks that will take more than 3 hours into 2 hour chunks. Tasks that will take less than 2 hours should not be broken up.
Here are my tasks and projects. Some have deadlines or priorities but many do not. High priority tasks should usurp low priority and medium priority. Medium priority tasks should usurp low priority. If they don’t have a deadline or a priority level, please just make sure they get done by [deadline].
If you can’t fit everything into my schedule, please leave out some of the tasks that don’t have deadlines or priorities or are low priority. Some things I’d like to do every day, they’re listed as “daily.” Can you put the "throughout the month" tasks on actual days?
Tasks & Projects:
One-off tasks & projects:
Recurring tasks & projects:
4. System
Now’s the fun part (in my opinion), creating a system to get everything running smoothly. I recommend creating ONE centralized space for everything. Use it for project management, bookmarks, notes, tracking your pitches, and staying organized.
No matter how you slice it, you’re going to be using multiple apps for your biz, creating a dashboard is an easy way to make sure you don’t forget about anything and you don’t get information overload. I personally use Notion to organize everything.
Here’s an exact duplicate of my dashboard.
I have links to all my apps at the top, a client roster, a pitch tracker, and a calendar/database for scheduling my work.
The work calendar is hooked up to Notion Calendar (the best new app that I’ve been waiting my whole life for) which integrates with my Google Calendar so I can see all my meetings and deadlines in one place.
5. Plan
Now that you have a skeleton schedule, a system to keep track of everything, and a big to-do list, you can put them all together.
- Add your to-do’s to your calendar (I put them in my Notion calendar)
- Hook up the proper links to your dashboard
- Make a plan to make the changes you want in your biz
- Make a plan for the goals you set
- Change your availability in your scheduling tool
- Update your pricing guide, portfolio, and LinkedIn (if needed)
- Organize your files (I use Google Drive) (if needed)
- Set a date to re-evaluate all of this in 3 months – it’s bound to change!
More organization resources for freelancers
The Freelancer Dashboard and Brain Dump Template are resources I made in Notion! You can duplicate them to your own workspace and use them to stay organized. Here are some free templates you can use to organize your brain and your business:
This blog is based on a recent Pop Club Workshop. Pop Club is our membership community for freelancers. If you found this blog helpful, you might enjoy Pop Club! You can check it out here:
If you just want to watch the replay of today’s workshop, you can snag the Replay Library as a part of all of my coaching services or for a flat price here. It has every replay of every Pop Club workshop ever. Plus, it gets updated twice a month with new workshops!
I hope these tips helped you get organized and find new systems that help you thrive.
Have questions? Reach out! I’m happy to help!