Multitasking and hourly work don’t mix
As a freelance copywriter, I prefer to work on a project-by-project basis, giving one price for a series of eNewsletters, a brochure, etc. Recently I’ve been working on an hourly basis for several clients, and I’m struggling.
A couple of hourly issues:
- Multitasking doesn’t work when you’re working hourly. Last week I kept trying to get into a really big hourly project, but the phone rang, or the teleconference time came up, or exciting emails came in.
- Covering off small tasks for an hourly project doesn’t work. For example, someone writes in and says, "Hey, Beth. Add this to that other document, pretty please." So I stop what I’m doing (3-5 minutes), absorb what has to be done (3-5 minutes), actually perform the task (10-15 minutes), write back to the client to let him know it’s done (2 minutes), go record the time in my time-tracking software (2 minutes), then figure out where I was in the other project and get back into it (3-5 minutes).
So perhaps I spent 15 minutes actually working on this. It actually took me 30 or so to get into it and out of it. What do I record?
I’ve moved my major hourly work to nights and weekends so I can work uninterrupted for longer periods of time. Yesterday I spent 6 very successful hours on a big project and pushed all the way to the end.
Ian on 03 Dec 2007 at 2:33 pm #
What you do is bill (or at least track) all the time you spend doing the trivial tasks that aren’t the “real” work, so you can get an idea in the future how much of the work you do on an hourly basis is likely to get written off – and then when you estimate subsequent work you have an informed idea of what the appropriate fudge factor for administrative BS will be. And it is valuable to sometimes show your client how much uncompensated time you put in on the work, as a goodwill gesture, and tell them next time it’s chargeable. Then they’ll think twice about frivolous changes, and will respect your attitude about the value of your time. YMMV, of course.