Tag Archives: time management

Flying solo: Time management for yourself and for your business. Part II: Action!

In this two-part article, Sue Littleford takes a fresh look at time management. She starts by covering the diagnosis – how much time you actually have – then goes on to examine what can go wrong with time management, and how to counter this.

In Part I of this article I looked at the basic information you need to improve your time management – knowing how much time you have, and how much time you need. Now we’re going to run through the main ways that spanners land in the works.

We can mess things up in all kinds of ways, and others can have a very good go at messing things up for us. As with all problems, knowing yourself and making appropriate adjustments is key. It’s part of running your business to manage your time effectively (and ideally efficiently). There are several points of weakness when it comes to managing our time. I’m going to address some of them here, in no particular order.

The first step in not messing things up is spotting your weak spot. Do you recognise any of these?

Procrastination

Putting off getting started is not going to help anything, or anyone, least of all you – learn to swallow the frog (do the horrible thing) as early in the day as possible so it’s not looming over you.

I read an interesting theory somewhere that procrastination is the body’s way of telling you you’re exhausted, mentally or physically. Does that strike a chord with you?

The difference between a professional and an amateur, I discovered a long time ago, is that the professional gets on with work even if they don’t feel like it (within reason!). So, how do you actually knuckle down to work when every cell of your body is screaming that you don’t want to?

I sidle up to things. I’m not going to start this scary edit. I’m just going to … remove all the excess spaces. Maybe check the headings are capitalised correctly. I’m definitely not going to do any work. Before I know it, I’ve been sucked in and am bouncing along, merrily working. Some Cloud Club chums tried this and have attested it works for them, too.

I discovered this way of approaching things when I had essays I had to write at university but wanted to do anything else but. So, I decided, the hardest part is beginning. Skip the beginning, then!

Thus I developed The Sidle. Maybe I’d jot down a few notes for the middle bit. If I knew what I was going to be introducing, I reasoned, surely writing the introduction would be a breeze instead of the insurmountable barrier I felt it to be.

It works a treat. It worked for this article! If getting started is a problem for you, try sidling up to things – definitely not working on them, just … doing work-adjacent things.

Researchers suggest different ploys – one size not fitting all – and suggest sticking reminders in your calendar (do actually set the reminder function to thrust the offending deadline in your face) or imagining Future You faced with the undone thing and having to deal with it in less time.

Jobs not arriving on time

Aaargh – you’re sitting there twiddling your thumbs, waiting for a job, watching the start date for the job afterwards getting closer and closer. Communicate with the erring client. Get a revised date and see what you can juggle.

If the client doesn’t have the same commitment to calendars that you have, you may have to tell the client they’ve missed the boat and they’ll have to reschedule when they’re ready. Or you could decide to make a rare exception to help them out and work silly hours for a short while. But do make such exceptions genuinely rare if you want to be the one in control of your time, rather than have clients – who don’t see the whole picture – dictating things.

Jobs taking longer than expected

It happens, no matter how accurate your preparations and brief from the client were. There’s something nasty buried in the middle of the text that no one spotted, and the essential decision-maker is off sick – we’ve all been there. Aside from considering whether you need to renegotiate the fee, you need possibly to renegotiate the deadline.

However, if the job itself is as expected, and the problem lies in your estimating ability, read on …

Lack of data

This one is easy to do something about, starting right now. See ‘Using your records to price jobs and make business decisions’ and ‘Facts for fiction editors’. If you’re a CIEP member, get your work record spreadsheet from the Going Solo toolkit to get you on the right track.

If you don’t know how long things really take you, you don’t know how much time you’re going to need when you estimate price and duration for a new job. If you don’t know how much time you need to get a job done, how are you going to manage your time effectively?

The CIEP’s course Efficient Editing: Strategies and Tactics will help you discover how long the various elements of a job take you and how to put them together to calculate a probable duration – or how to work out how much of a job you can do in the time budget set by the client.

Lack of planning

Do you deliberately include wiggle room in your estimation of time? If you don’t, start right now! How much you include will be personal to you – your health, your commitments outside of work and your personal preferences. I allow at least two spare days per book, for instance. At least two.

Do you intend to be finished by the deadline, or a day or two before it? Guess which plan best allows you to deal with disruption.

Overcommitting

I’m a great proponent of saying no! Hardly anyone is ever offended, it’s truly a liberating feeling and you get to manage your time better.

Sometimes you have to say no to something you really wanted to work on, and that’s sad. Sadder is saying yes and messing up because you really didn’t have the time to do the text justice. Ditto for agreeing to too-short deadlines.

Remember – you can say no without explaining yourself, or feeling you have to provide an alternative editor. Just say ‘I’m fully booked and won’t be able to help you on this occasion.’ If you want, you can always send the potential client to the CIEP directory to find someone else.

Poor prioritising

I’ve already mentioned swallowing any frogs you have in your virtual in-tray. But there are other ways that poor prioritising can have an impact on you.

Take a look at the job as soon as it arrives, to make sure you have all the material and all the instructions, and that the instructions are workable. If you put this off until you’re ready to start and you encounter problems, you’re losing time that could have been spent doing the work – you need to allow time for other people to respond.

I always try to think of what happens next to the piece of work I have in hand. If someone else has to do something before the work comes back to me, can I arrange my work so that their bit is done first and give them the maximum time to meet the deadline?

If I’m incorporating an author’s responses into the file, then this is my line of thinking. It’s the reason I much prefer to send queries out chapter by chapter rather than when I’ve got to the end of the book.

Lack of rest

If you’re exhausted from working too long without a break, your working days are just too long anyway, or you’re living with or recovering from an illness, work is going to take longer and longer and longer. Grinding on is inefficient, no matter how noble it makes you feel.

Take the time off – nap, go for a walk in the fresh air, take a full hour for lunch – and come back ready to tackle work again with a clearer head and more energy.

The (un)expected invasion of real life

If you have allowed some of my infamous wiggle room and planned to finish the work a day or two earlier than required, then real life barging into your work life is easier to manage.
Of course, it depends on what the issue is. Some things you’ll be able to cope with because you’ve granted yourself the bandwidth to be able to deal with things besides work. Other things will be bona fide catastrophes, and a couple of days of slack built into your schedule is not going to help.

But these aren’t run-of-the-mill occurrences. If they are, then you need to pay attention to where the weak spots are that are causing the disruption and take some form of action. You’ll feel better for being proactive, and you may be able to reduce, even if you can’t remove, the impact.

Force majeure

This is the unforeseeable circumstance that stops you from fulfilling a contract. The key word there is ‘unforeseeable’.

For a freelancer, it’s probably going to be something that’s pretty devastating in your personal life. But the news is full of people to whom bad things have happened, so do include some mention of force majeure in your boilerplate contracts / terms and conditions.

Even problems short of force majeure should be allowed for in your contracts, by the way. Include clauses about what happens if the client – or you – are late delivering the files.

Lack of a disaster recovery plan

Some disasters can be anticipated. A dead computer, lost files, these are things you can plan for and take some early action.

Other disasters will be tackled via thought experiments, from which some action, or at least some ideas, may flow. What do I do if the house burns down? What do I do if my life partner is seriously ill or dies? Or another family member, or a dear friend? What will others do if I am seriously ill or die? The CIEP’s Wise Owls took a look at this, and there’s a CIEP fact sheet on the subject, too.

A lack of such preparation means that when (if) disaster strikes, the stress is so much the worse as is the loss of valuable time while you scurry around trying to deal with the problem with that increased stress level in the middle of the maelstrom.

If you’ve not yet read Part I of this article, do take a look at it if you want to figure out how much time you actually have for work, and how much work you can accept.

Over to you

What time-management ploys have worked for you? Tell us in the comments!

About Sue Littleford

Sue Littleford is the author of the CIEP guide Going Solo, now in its second edition. She went solo with her own freelance copyediting business, Apt Words, in March 2007 and specialises in scholarly humanities and social sciences.

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

Photo credits: header image by Aron Visuals, Procrastination by Annie Spratt, chaos by Brett Jordan, sleeping cat by Kate Stone Matherson, all on Unsplash.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Flying solo: Time management for yourself and for your business. Part I: Diagnosis

Knowing how much time you have

Take a good hard look at your week. How much time is available to work? How much time – and when – does your family need? How much time – and when – do other commitments take? How much time do you need for the essentials – eating, sleeping, household tasks? How much downtime do you need? Pro tip: do not skimp on sleeping time or relaxation time.

How about your month? Your year? Figure out how much time is available for work. That may vary from day to day, from week to week, as other commitments and wishes take priority. But come up with a basic work diary that will show you your work time, and block out the time you need for everything else. If you have holidays in mind, into the diary they go.

Researchers have figured out that five hours per day of intensive work is all you’re going to do, healthily, if you want to have a long-term career without burnout.

Do you use the popular Pomodoro technique of 25 minutes’ work then a 5-minute break? I don’t. The brain starts to lose concentration after around 45 minutes. But did you know it takes more than 20 minutes to get back into a deep-work state?

Those two figures together mean I’m not a fan of Pomodoro. Editorial work is deep work, and breaking off halfway through my capacity to concentrate, only to take most of the next work period to get back into the flow, is anything but helpful for time management. I’ve found I come up for air at around 50–65 minutes, so that’s when I take a break. I get much more work done than when I was trying to work to the Pomodoro timings.

In an ideal world, you’d arrange your work to suit your personal rhythm – are you a morning person or an evening one? It’s useful to know when you find it easiest to concentrate and work efficiently and effectively, but in some people’s lives, that’s a luxury for some future year.

Cal Newport’s Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World is an excellent read for people doing editorial work.

Taking holidays: Respecting yourself

When you think of scheduling time off, what barriers do you put up? That clients will never approach you again if you’re away when they contact you? (Answer: let clients likely to contact you know you’re going to be away from your desk. One person I spoke to about this suggested putting your holiday dates in your email signature – neat. And learn how to turn on your out-of-office autoresponder for your email. Clients take holidays themselves: they’ll understand.)

Or do you have FOMO – fear of missing out – on a plum job?

Or perhaps you feel you can’t afford it. That’s more likely in the early years when you’re building up your business – especially if you’re the only or principal breadwinner. If you’re not at work, you’re not earning. That’s an argument for ensuring your fee rates cover not-work time as well as all your other overheads, something I wrote about on my own blog (the key bit is towards the end of the article).

It’s sage advice to add to your cushion of cash whenever you can – a counsel of perfection, I know, but one worth aiming for. Part of that cushion is for non-working times, whether that’s voluntary holidays, work famines or some other rainy-day need.

If you fail to take holidays because the client always comes first, then it’s time to set yourself some personal boundaries, and learn to respect yourself, and them. It’s far healthier, mentally and physically.

People who don’t have partners or children at home probably find it easier to cave in and fill a holiday week with work than those who have given commitments to other people. If this is you, is there someone you could give an equivalent commitment to? If you’re not going away, then perhaps you could book in some activities or trips with a friend?

Knowing how much time you need

Now you know how much time you have for work, how much work can you take on to fill that time? It bears repeating – do not plan to work 100% of your available time. You’ll need a buffer for the unexpected. If you are fully committed, every moment of your waking life, where’s your capacity to cope if something happens off-schedule? If you catch a bad cold, let alone anything more time-consuming?

If you’re worried about having gaps in your diary, know that you can fill them with marketing, with training or continual professional development, with reviewing your processes – all things that contribute to your business, but that are less riveted to the spot in terms of deadlines. It also leaves you the capacity perhaps to say yes to an unexpected job offer if you want to.

Know your work speed if you want to schedule jobs accurately

I started keeping stats on my work throughput as part of my invoicing system when I started freelance editing in 2007. I’ve made various improvements since then, and you’ve seen the result in the Going Solo toolkit’s business records.

After years of data collection, I know how fast I usually work on different kinds of material, what my slowest is, what my fastest is, how work from repeat clients is likely to absorb my time – all kinds of essential information.

I have, essentially, a database to compare new jobs to, which will tell me how much time I’m likely to need (and then I add wiggle room). But from the moment you record your first job, you’re on your way to building up your own database, which will just get more and more useful.

Without information on how long things take, you can’t schedule work with confidence, because you’re basically guessing.

Now you know how much time you have available, and how long various kinds of work take. If you’ve taken my advice, you’re not trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot (a litre into a half-litre pot doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?).

Planning a timetable

Rough out a timetable with milestones, so you know how far through the job you need to be every two or three days. It will help you work out whether the deadline is feasible, and it will draw some lines in the sand so you’ll know if you start to lag behind.

For books, I do this by printing out the contents page, and noting how many pages in each chapter, then use my knowledge of my work speed to figure out how long each chapter will take me. Then I assign each chapter to a day, or two days, depending on length and complexity.

For articles and other short pieces of writing, this isn’t nearly so complicated, but if you’re doing a lot on a fast turnaround, treat each piece as part of a larger whole – do you have to finish three today and three by the end of the week? There’ll be some kind of expectation, so jot it down so you know that you’ve done enough for today, or that you need to make an earlier start tomorrow.

There’s no need to draw up fancy charts, which themselves are time-consuming to produce. But do remember to fit your timetable around your other commitments – it has to be realistic (and include some wiggle room, of course).

Ready to read Part II of this article?

Over to you

What time-management ploys have worked for you? Tell us in the comments!

About Sue Littleford

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credits: header image by Agê Barros, beach holiday by S’well, diary by Jeshoots, all on Unsplash.

Posted by Belinda Hodder, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

An interview with Paul Beverley: the man behind the macros

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Paul Beverley is well known in the editing community as the ‘king of macros’. He has not only devised and developed such indispensable free tools as FRedit, but also provides training via Zoom, on YouTube and in person. Paul talked to the CIEP Information Team about his ‘total and utter obsession’ with macros, and his plans for the future.

How (and why) did you get started with macros?

I joined SfEP (as it was then) 17 years ago after editing and typesetting my own monthly computer magazine for 20 years. The magazine was dying and I was heavily in debt, so I had to find freelance editing work and needed to do that work fast.

For the previous 15 years, I had used a FRedit-like computer program with a Mac, so I got someone to write a version of it in Visual Basic for Word, and from there I set about learning to program my own macros. But I also had to learn to use Word, which I had never used before!

What are your favourite macros? (e.g. the ones you think are most helpful)

Number 1 has to be FRedit. You give it a list of words, phrases or punctuation that you want highlighting and/or changing globally, and FRedit does it in seconds. I simply wouldn’t bother editing without it.

Next it has to be analysis macros such as DocAlyse, ProperNounAlyse and HyphenAlyse, because I love spotting inconsistencies, even before I’ve read a word.

What’s motivated you to be so generous in putting together and sharing all your macros?

Putting together? See question 1 – a selfish desire to earn more quickly.

Sharing? Why not? What have I got to lose by letting others benefit?

Sharing for free? Easy! If I sold them I’d need to employ a team of technical support personnel (there are well over 1,100 macros to support). As it is, people are really grateful when I help them and, if I’m honest, I like it when people say they appreciate me.

Do you have any tips for overcoming a fear of using/reluctance to use macros?

It can all sound rather daunting but if you can get going with just two or three macros, or maybe half a dozen, you’ll save yourself time and that will motivate you to pick up a few more.

That’s the approach in our self-learning offering: ‘Macros from Square One’ (Mac or PC), where you learn how to install a macro into Visual Basic and then you use it, and then you load another one and so on.

Or another low-tech approach is that you can put a special Word file into a folder on your computer, and suddenly, without ever seeing the inside of a computer program, you will have a dozen or more macros ready to use. This is called ‘Macros Free Trial’.

Also, there’s Jennifer Yankopolus’s ‘Macro of the month’, with hints and tips as well as a suggested macro to try each month.

But to really get yourself launched there’s a paid six-session training course run by Jennifer Yankopolus for the EFA: ‘Macros A to Z’. It gets booked up quickly but if you sign up for ‘Macro of the month’ you’ll get the dates of the next course.

What question are you asked most often about macros (and what is the answer)?

Apart from ‘How do I get started?’ (see above), there’s ‘Are macros safe?’ If you are worried about viruses, there’s no need. In Word’s File–Options–Trust Center Settings, keep your setting as ‘Disable all macros without notification’.

If people are worried about messing up a document by using macros, then, yes, this can happen, but only if you misuse a given macro. Any tool needs to be used with care, so follow the instructions and don’t take on something too complicated too soon.

What is the most unusual/interesting request for a macro you’ve had?

Maybe checking, for a PR agency, the length of tweets – 140 characters max (they can be longer now).

Or, in a book about the card game bridge, changing all the special symbols (icons for clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades); the client wanted text: cx, dx, hx, sx.

In another example, someone had to check the totals at the bottoms of columns of figures in a document, and they didn’t fancy typing all the figures into a calculator. One click for each, and the macro checked the addition instantaneously.

Is there any request/need you’ve not been able to make a macro for?

Yes, occasionally, but it’s usually because the request would take too much of my limited available development time for what is perhaps a rather niche application.

The problem is more often the other way around. People want a specific macro, and within the 1,000 macros there is probably one already, but how do you find it? To help, we’ve provided an electronically searchable ‘Macro Menu’.

Have you ever tried to create macros in Google Docs? Would you?

My answers are ‘no’ and ‘no’, in that order. Again, it’s not a matter of pride or principle, just that I’ve got my work cut out trying to support the existing macros and develop new ones that people ask for.

Paul demonstrating his macros at the 2022 CIEP conference

You train people to use your macros. Where in the world has this taken you?

Physically, only to Spain and Canada, but the Spanish editors are so keen on using macros that they have translated some of the macros and some of the documentation for Spain and Central and South America.

When the pandemic hit, I discovered Zoom and so I have been able to train people all over the world. At one stage, I taught people in eight different countries inside five days. And I know of 56 different countries where my macros are being used – and not all for editing in English; there are specific macros on my website for editing in Dutch, German and Spanish, none of which I speak!

And (as a rough estimate) how many people do you think you’ve trained?

I’ve no way of knowing, actually. My YouTube channel has over 1,300 subscribers, if that’s any indication.

You’re now approaching retirement. Will you continue to create and explain macros?

As long as I can, I’ll keep creating macros – it’s a total and utter obsession. But training is not really my forte because I tend to bombard people with all the exciting and time-saving things they could do with macros. Not helpful!

When I’m gone, my macros will still be available, but I became concerned, a few years ago, that all the programming techniques I use to create new macros are locked in my brain. I managed to document many of them in my book’s Appendix 13 – ‘Word Macro Techniques’, and demonstrated some in YouTube videos.

However, in the past few years Word has become even more ‘feature-bloated’ and therefore VBA [Visual Basic for Applications, the programming language used for Word macros], has got slower. I have had to work out tricks to regain the lost speed of some of the more complex macros. These techniques are largely undocumented.

I get a kick from creating new macros but documenting the techniques is a real slog. So if anyone could offer help or inspiration on the documentation front, that would be much appreciated. It would be a shame to lose those tricks when I’m gone. Thanks.

How else will you spend your retirement?

I am now more or less retired from paid editing, but my lovely wife Sue has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, so I’m guessing that I’ll have less and less time for macros (and documentation) as the years roll by, and we’re also involved in an Alzheimer’s drugs trial.

Also, please be warned that I’m planning to do another sponsored Land’s End to John O’Groats bike ride, but this time for the Alzheimer’s Society. It will have to be a local ride as I don’t like leaving Sue for too long. I can do the required 1,000 miles plus 38,000 feet of climb by cycling 200 times around Taverham, where I live outside Norwich – it’s actually quite hilly here.

I hope you’ll support me – you might say it’s 1,000 miles for 1,000 macros. Thank you, in advance.

Find Paul’s macro resources

Discover Paul’s Macro Menu.
Word files for macros from Square One (in Mac and PC versions) and Free Trial Macros instructions are also available from Paul’s website.
See Paul’s demonstrations on his YouTube channel.

About Paul Beverley

Starting in 2005, Paul Beverley’s freelance editing + SfEP + macros got him out of a massive financial hole. Now fully pensioned, he is very fortunate to be able to give the macros back to CIEP and the wider editing world. It’s great fun!

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credit: Bicycle by Deniz Anttila from Pixabay

Posted by Julia Sandford-Cooke, CIEP information commissioning editor.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP

Making time for marketing and CPD

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One of those age-old questions for freelance editors and proofreaders is how to find time for marketing and continuing professional development (CPD) when other work keeps getting in the way. In this post, Philippa Lewis brings together some approaches that have helped her and other CIEP members.

When I started freelancing, I had no idea how much extra work would be involved on top of actual editing work. Words are my love and joy, and I’m more than happy to spend hours deliberating over every tiny aspect of punctuation, but I found myself completely unprepared for how much time marketing and CPD would take up.

Marketing in particular has been a challenge for me; I find the thought of promoting myself very uncomfortable, and marketing takes up time which I could be spending editing. And I would much, much rather be editing. It’s easy to convince myself that marketing is a waste of time when I could be spending that time completing paid work instead, so most of my attempts at marketing have been squeezed in out of slight desperation when I haven’t had any work booked in.

At the recent CIEP conference, Kia Thomas did an excellent talk about marketing. I really appreciated how matter-of-fact she was about it: as a freelancer, you have no choice but to market your business, so you might as well get on with it. Whether or not you enjoy doing marketing isn’t really relevant, because you still have to do it.

This was a bit of a wake-up call for me, and since then I’ve tried to come up with a system for regularly building marketing and CPD into my working week.

Find what works for you

Editors often talk about setting aside one morning or day a week for CPD and marketing. Having a specific slot for these tasks sounds like an excellent approach, but I always find that when I reach the time I’ve set aside, my latest editing deadline inevitably feels like a higher priority.

I’ve finally realised that a more flexible approach works better for me. I start my week by identifying the CPD and marketing tasks that I want to accomplish. These get written on a post-it and stuck onto my computer monitor; keeping them visible means I can’t forget to do them. I try to identify a mix of quick jobs (like sending a CV to a publisher) and longer ones (like drafting a blog post) for each week. I try to break tasks into smaller units where needed: ‘check pricing page on website’ feels more manageable than ‘re-do website’.

These tasks then got slotted in throughout the week. I find it useful to do them whenever I need a break from editing – often at the end of a work day, or before lunch. I might not have the mental capacity to edit another paragraph, but I can still manage to do a marketing task or read a blog post. Cycling through tasks like this means I’m more productive, as I’m ticking something off my list despite not feeling up to completing work for a client.

At the moment, this approach is working really well and allowing me to consistently complete CPD and marketing goals. But it’s freeing to remember that this might not be a strategy that works for me long term – I’ve found it really helpful to keep an open mind rather than trying to stick to a set routine that doesn’t feel like it’s working any more. We all work in different ways; don’t be afraid to try different approaches until you find a method that works for you.

Prioritise

Marketing and CPD both sometimes feel overwhelming: the list of things I could be doing can feel endless, and when the list is so long, sometimes it’s difficult to get started on working through it.

I’ve now got a list of CPD and marketing tasks that I want to complete, with the more pressing ones near the top, and I use this list to help me identify my tasks for each week.

CIEP member Eleanor Bolton has found it helpful to think about her long-term goals, then select CPD options that relate to this. She says ‘I had quite a long list of courses that all sounded interesting and potentially useful, but there was no way I could fit them all in. Over the summer I spent some time thinking about who my preferred clients were and ended up niching quite considerably. As a result, quite a few of those courses were no longer relevant.’

Be flexible

I’m currently doing a developmental editing course, and it wouldn’t be possible to complete the assignments for this in short bursts of time, or at the end of a day when I’m already tired. Likewise, if I’ve got a complex edit booked in, sometimes setting aside a chunk of time for CPD and marketing is more effective than trying to slot in extra tasks each day. On a different week with a different workload, a different approach might work better. It’s important to stay flexible, and to work with whatever your current circumstances are.

Anything is better than nothing

I’m aware that I could improve my editing speed if I improved my knowledge of using Word. I don’t have time to do a full course on it at the moment, so instead I’ve bought a book on the subject and I’m taking ten minutes every couple of days to work through a few pages. I’m not learning as much (or as quickly) as I would on a course, but I’m still learning something. Each tip I pick up is improving my editing speed.

Maybe you don’t have time to do a course at the moment, but could you listen to a podcast while doing the washing up or when you’re in the car? Again, this comes down to taking a step back and being willing to be flexible: what would be achievable with how your working week looks right now?

I regularly have to remind myself that anything is better than nothing. It’s really easy to get caught up in thinking all your marketing materials have to be perfect, which can lead to never finishing anything – but an imperfect website will reach more clients than a non-existent one.

Get something finished and sent off or published, even if you’re not completely happy with it: send a CV out to publishers even if you’re still completing a training course that you wanted to add to it; publish that blog post even though you’re not completely happy with one paragraph in it.

Reflect

And finally, set a moment aside to think about whether your current approach is working for you.

CIEP member Anna Baildon finds monthly reflections helpful to keep her CPD and marketing on track: ‘Each month I think about what’s gone well, what’s been more challenging and what I’ve learned. A brief look through my diary and my Trello board is usually enough to prompt my thoughts and form some analysis. It’s surprising how much insight this simple task provides. It’s like having a monthly meeting with my boss to bring clarity and focus to my work.’

There’s no ‘right’ way to tackle CPD and marketing; it’s just about finding an approach that works for you, sticking to it when you’re able to, and taking small but consistent steps forward.

About Philippa Lewis

Philippa Lewis is a freelance developmental editor, copyeditor and proofreader. She works on a mix of speculative fiction and outdoors literature, and lives in North Wales.

About the CIEP

Find out more about:

Photo credits: unfocused lights and coffee both by Pixabay on Pexels.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP

How to be more productive: Part 2

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By Abi Saffrey

Keeping track of time and projects (and money)

Part 1 looked at ways we can increase our focus and reduce distractions when we’re working. This post looks at efficient and speedy ways we can keep an eye on our time and projects.

I once went on a three-day training course where the trainer told us to leave our watches behind. She took the clock off the training room wall. And we weren’t working on computers. I can’t really remember what the moral of the story was, but I do remember how odd it felt to have no idea how much time had passed, and how long it was until lunch. There was certainly some discussion about how we are all pretty much constantly aware of the time, with it in the corner of our computer screens. And that weird thing about looking at a watch, seeing the time, and then having to check again barely a minute later.

Anyway … Now I keep tabs on what I’m doing pretty much every minute of my working day, and I know what projects I have to prioritise this week and next (and occasionally next month too). Here are a selection of tools that could help you maximise your monitoring – and if you know of something good that isn’t mentioned, please do share in the comments below.

How to be more productive: Time monitoring

It’s really important, for your business records, to keep track of how much time you spend on each task or project. Even if you’re not charging an hourly rate, you can use the time taken on one project to estimate how much time a future similar project will fill.

You can use paper and pen to note down times as you work, or Excel: a recent CIEP forum post highlighted some Excel tips for time tracking (following Maya Berger’s excellent conference session on using Excel to manage your business). The Pomodoro Technique (covered in Part 1) lets you assign 25-minute blocks to each task, and then tally those blocks up at the end of the day.

A popular time tracker is Toggl Track (previously known as Toggl), which has a web version as well as desktop and mobile apps. The desktop version pops up regularly if you’re not tracking your time to prompt you to start; the easy-to-use reports (only accessible via a web browser) can be filtered to only show specific projects or specific timeframes; and you get a weekly email summarising what you’ve been doing (free and paid plans available).

RescueTime is a desktop app that keeps an eye on what software you’re using (and which websites you’re visiting), and then categorises your activity – you can then finetune that and add more granular details if you wish. You can set goals and receive a weekly report. The premium (paid-for) version has distraction-blocking software, so can help you stay away from your favourite procrastination websites (free and paid plans available).

FreshBooks is accounting software, but all its paid plans come with a time-tracking app included. The time-tracking data can be automatically pulled into an invoice and sent directly to clients (free trial, followed by paid plans).

Work management

How do you keep track of what you need to get done today, tomorrow, next week? There’s always the classic notebook option (I do like a Collins Metropolitan Glasgow), or a physical diary (I’m trying out a BLOX one in 2021).

All laptops, phones and tablets have an inbuilt calendar of some kind or another, and they have very similar functionality.

I suspect Excel is used by most self-employed editors and proofreaders to collate the details of the work they’ve done – I use a spreadsheet to note down all the information about a project, and a summary sheet tallies up my total earnings, and my average hourly rates. Every financial year I copy the last spreadsheet, remove all the data and start filling it in again. The CIEP will soon be launching a range of Excel templates to record work, finances and CPD to accompany a new edition of its Going Solo guide. Maya Berger has created The Editor’s Affairs (TEA) – a selection of spreadsheets that will give you an insight into what you’re earning and what you could be charging (paid for, with personalisation available).

Todoist is a comprehensive but simple task manager – or to-do list – app; it allows you to add tasks by forwarding emails, and has integration with many other apps and tools (including Alexa) (free and paid plans).

Trello is based on Kanban boards, a project-management tool where tasks can be moved from one section within a board to another, or across boards. This has been the one thing I’ve tried in recent years that has really worked for me: I’ve been using Trello for about two years, and create a board for each week. Within each board I have a list for each day, as well as a master ‘to do’ list and a ‘done’ list. I start the week with all my cards (tasks) in the ‘to do’ list, and drag them across to the day on which I want to get them done. At the end of the week, I move all the things I haven’t done into the next week’s board and close down the now old board (free).

A quiet week on Trello

Sue Browning wrote a blog post last year about Cushion, an app that helps you plan your schedule, track your time and sort out your invoices (free trial, then paid-for plans).

There are lots of accounting software/app options too; QuickBooks, FreeAgent and FreshBooks are set up for sole traders, and can save you time when it comes to tracking expenses, invoicing and preparing your tax returns (all free trial, then paid-for plans).

The good news is that these two posts on productivity have barely scratched the surface of what’s available. New options appear all the time, so keep in touch on the CIEP forums, or comment below if there’s something you really rate that hasn’t been covered. We may even be able to produce a third blog on productivity. Now that’s what I call productive.

Abi Saffrey is an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP. She’ll try any productivity gimmick or gadget but really didn’t get on with bullet journaling. A member of the CIEP’s information team, she coordinates this blog and edits Editorial Excellence, the Institute’s external newsletter.

Andy Coulson’s most recent What’s e-new? post covers some other tools that can help you boost your business in 2021.

Photo credits: clock by Sonja Langford on Unsplash

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

What’s e-new?

1. Help! How do I fix my computer?

I suspect this may be something we will all come up against sooner or later. The good news is that there are lots of good resources that can walk you through common problems. Even if your PC or Mac is down you can search on a smartphone and hopefully get yourself running again. Sites like wikihow.com; helpdeskgeek.com; dummies.com; techrepublic.com and Microsoft’s own answers.microsoft.com and support.microsoft.com are all helpful.

A carefully thought-through Google search will often be the best approach. For example, ‘Word 365 normal template’ gives good answers as to why Office 365 keeps flagging the normal.dotm as corrupted. It contains the version of Word and the specific item that is causing the issue. If your computer is giving a fault code or description, include that in the search too.

I’ve written before about backing up, spring cleaning and virus scanners, and all these tips and tools are still relevant. I’ve recently been pointed towards Microsoft’s Safety Scanner, which is an additional, occasional-use virus checker. It is good if you suspect you have a virus, as you can download and run a clean copy of the scanner (if you do have a virus, that may have compromised the scanner on your system).

Finally in this section, Microsoft Word itself is a prime cause of the air turning blue around my workspace. Again, Microsoft’s own support pages can be really good – support.office.com. Our own forums are also a good source of support (forums.ciep.uk), with many experienced word-wranglers being regular contributors. One of my favourite sources of help to answer ‘how to’ issues in Word is wordribbon.tips.net/index.html, and it is well worth subscribing to their newsletter.

2. Managing your time

While I’m at home I find I am facing two opposite problems with managing my time. The first is that it can be difficult to focus and stick at what you are doing. The second is the polar opposite of that: using work as a distraction and spending too long nose to screen. But we can use technology to help in both cases to nudge us in the right direction. I’ve written in the past about approaches based on the Pomodoro technique, which encourages you to keep going for a fixed amount of time, or conversely take a break from work after a fixed period of time. The suggestions here are two examples on that theme.

Forest is an app that tries to help you focus by making a game of focusing on a task. You set the timer for as little as 10 minutes through to 2 hours. Each time you start a stretch of work the app plants a virtual tree. Complete the stretch and you start a forest. Quit and your tree dies. It’s a simple idea and strangely addictive. You could use this either to build up your focus or to remind you to take a break.

Workrave is aimed at helping people recover from RSI, but is also a useful tool to encourage you to take breaks from the keyboard and mouse as you work. It produces gentle reminders, which you can configure, to take frequent microbreaks and longer breaks to step away from the computer, and you can even set a daily maximum.

3. Staying fit

Keeping healthy is one of the key things we are being encouraged to do, and there is a massive number of resources that have been made available in response to the lockdown. YouTube is a particularly good resource, and all the suggestions below can be found there.

Normally I’m a keen swimmer and cyclist, but am not getting very far (yes, pun intended!) with either at the moment. However, the Global Triathlon Network has a number of very accessible workout suggestions, despite the elite-sounding name.

If you have kids at home (or even if you don’t), Joe Wicks’s The Body Coach TV channel has a regular PE-with-Joe session. He also has a range of other home workouts that need little or no equipment and cater for a range of abilities.

Yoga is another home-friendly exercise, and I find it also helps undo the damage done by sitting in front of a computer for long periods. Yoga with Adrienne and Five Parks Yoga both offer a range of sessions, from basic, short beginner sessions through to longer, more advanced sessions. Headspace have also put a series of Move Mode sessions on YouTube, which are not traditional yoga, but more a meditative approach to movement.

Finally, I’ve really got into meditation as a way of having a break from everything. Headspace, Mindspace and Calm all have a range of shorter (10-minute) meditations freely available on YouTube. I am particularly enjoying some of Headspace’s Meditations from the American National Parks where you are encouraged to focus on sounds or colours instead of your breath.

I hope that is helpful to you. Stay safe, and we’ll hopefully get back to some more techie stuff next issue.

Andy Coulson is a reformed engineer and primary teacher, and a Professional Member of CIEP. He is a copyeditor and proofreader specialising In STEM subjects and odd formats like LaTeX.

‘What’s e-new?’ was a regular column in the SfEP’s magazine for members, Editing Matters. The column has moved onto the blog until its new home on the CIEP website is ready.

Members can browse the Editing Matters back catalogue through the Members’ Area.

Photo credits: Forest – B NW; keyboard – Christian Wiediger, both on Unsplash

Proofread by Liz Jones, Advanced Professional Member.
Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.