As a freelancer, one of the biggest problems I face is time management. Now, what does that mean is most of the freelancers they are lazy by nature because there are no office hours, okay? And there are no sometimes the deadlines are too far and I say okay, I will do it in two or three days just relax for two or three days. Okay. Now in this lesson, I am going to tell you how to manage your time how to divide it for learning new skills, and how to effectively use your time for freelancing. Now the first thing I have seen in a lot of freelance designers is that they waste time on competition websites, like 99 designs.com and few similar websites.

Now what they do is they take competition in a lot of websites and they waste hours and hours on designing and what they get is they lose that competition and waste like 20 or 30 hours of their VP capacity Okay, now what is the calculation? What are you going to lose is that if you design even one website for 10 hours and your hourly rate is $20, you are going to lose $200. So why not take a small hundred dollar project instead of wasting time on these websites, okay? So it makes some logic, okay, even if you take four or five design competitions and you just win one of them to get $300. Still, if you take projects in the half of the price or even less than half of the price, you are going to win more money in doing fixed project jobs rather than wasting time on competition websites, okay?

So try to avoid these competition websites like 99 designs.com if you want to really use your time and you have a lot of time in the start of your career, you are experimenting with your designs or your skills, okay? So try to build a side project. Okay, so these are the takeaways. I'm I'm going to tell you I'm telling right now build a side project like try to redesign Skype or a Skype interface or try to design some sign up page of Amazon and share it with on behance or dribble or any other website to others and see what are the reviews or comments. Okay, now I'm going to show you why I showed you this wasting time on competition websites. Let me show you an example of this.

I have the same experience. So here I have the winning website with me and the website I designed for that client. It's a very high class blow dryer bar you can see over here this is my design Porsche blow dry bar. Okay, so what happened is that I designed it maybe in an improved it many times, taking like 10 hours. And what happened is that I went to the finals Okay, I was selected in Five or six designers which went to the final okay, but I lost in the end and I lost with a very you can say ugly design Okay, so if you go I'm going to show you that one also. So first let's see my design over here you can see over here it is a very classy design even I saw their picture and their inner atmosphere of their bar to me me a match up my team Okay, so this team was actually aligned with their own blow dry bar or their own styling that saloon or whatever it is.

And now I'm going to show you the design which won this competition Okay, so this is the design okay. You can see it is very ugly, even bar and everything. Okay, so orange color. What is the meaning of this orange color? I don't even get it. Okay.

So orange is is not their brand color at all. Okay. So what I did is my design was elegant it was in all black and white and just Purple. Purple was their main logo color and everything okay? It is all biased in the end. The person who is looking at the at the final designs is the one going to choose the design is not going to be the best design.

Second example I'm going to show you is this app. This is the app I designed for but this is a winning app. Let me show you my design after some time. So you can see over here, I don't understand what are these arrow arrow means whether they go up down, does this mean cancel or go back? Okay, so a lot of usability issues in this app Okay. Now, let me show you my design.

So, this is my design. You can see over here, this is my design, my design was better. total score was short total points was shown at any time, the words used have played with okay. And also the tick mark means that this is good and you can go ahead and cross means that you need to go back okay? Also this was if you click on tick you will see this window over here and you can see even my navigation and these are the texts over here they are more elegant and more design wise it was better than the design one. Okay, so I wasted a lot of my time over here.

So after these two losses, even this added to my portfolio, but still I don't like it that I wasted 20 hours on these two designs. Okay, this is the basic thing behind this wasting your time on 99 designs. So don't waste your time like mine and try to build some side project. Now how you're going to manage your time is try to divide your day into three equal parts. Okay, the first part of the day you will be feeling very energetic and you will be fresh. So what you are going to do is maybe you need to read some book for 30 or 30 minutes or 15 minutes and then try to do your freelance work, okay?

Keep your tasks, daily tasks in front of you. Okay, I am going to accomplish these three small tasks, okay, divide your bigger projects into smaller tasks. Okay, now in the second part of the day, you are going to do your home's household work or your personal tasks, go to the market, shopping, bring milk or bread or whatever you want. Okay, now, in the third part of the day, when you are going to sleep, you can read some article, or you can reply to your clients, reply their emails, try to write some proposals to your clients. Okay, so, third part of the day at the night you are going to basically communicate with your clients. So this is how I recommend that you divide your workday Also, you should aim for six hours work time, don't go above eight hours or 10 hours or 12 hours.

Okay, now the third most important part is learning okay? You should always give time allocate time to your learning. Now while learning is important if you really want to get ahead of other freelancers or really want to shine in your profile or portfolio, you should always go for continuous learning, okay, it is a must have. Always try to allocate two to four hours a week, and maybe at the end of the week on the Sundays when you are not working, try to learn for two hours, watch some courses, online courses, or try to read some books, okay. Also try to include learning in your daily routine, maybe 15 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Add your in your daily schedule to read an article or watch two videos, okay?

And don't waste your time on Facebook or Twitter. Okay, so this is a must have. Okay, now this is all about allocating your time to different sections and how to control your freelance time. So if you have any questions ask me. Let's move on to the next lesson.