There is a special drive and dedication that belongs to freelancers and small business owners. Getting up ready to pitch, work on projects, making the most of your time, using free time to learn, and more. 

This is why freelancers and small business owners really benefit from automation in almost all areas of life.

Photo by Brandy Kennedy on Unsplash

Really when it is just you and maybe your virtual assistant, you can only do one thing at a time. Multitasking is something that we need to do sometimes, but most often, it is not the best way to manage work. That is why to-do lists, schedules, and automation can help you increase your already high productivity.

Think about how many tasks you do each day:

• Invoicing and other finance management
• Pitching
• Social media
• Creating content
• Outreach
• Task management
• Product creation
• Daily life tasks from cleaning to eating well 

Having a creative and relaxed flow can help these tasks be accomplished quickly and with less stress. Let’s look at how automation can help you to keep your tasks organized!

Outside Work Tasks

Outside of your work, you probably still have to manage life. Outside work tasks are simple things like cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming, cooking several times a week, everything down to clearing out your garage (top tip: I recommend scheduling time for testing household utilities for any preventative maintenance once a month! I recently lost a few hours in day when I had to contact a   garage door company for a troublesome repair.)

If you have it in your budget, try to save yourself time by utilizing a home cleaning service, or a meal prep/delivery service.  This will give you more time to relax outside of working hours.

Quick Action

It is essential that you take the next three steps to really narrow down where and how you can automate for the best. 

• Elimination
• Automation
• Delegation

Take a hard look at what you put time into that doesn’t bring you money, time, or happiness. If your email list has been dormant for years, then it is time to get rid of it or make it a primary function. 

Look at how long you are spending on these things, and reduce them or remove them.

Look at all of the tools you use, the platforms you use, the invoicing methods, and think about where you can automate the process. Do a deep dive on your time spent and the repetitiveness of the task.

Delegation – this is where a virtual assistant can come into play.

Key Automation Points

After taking some time to really go through your work then here are some tools that can help you to give yourself more free time and an easier workflow. 

Invoice Reminders

A healthy cash flow isn’t the easiest thing to manage. However, it is important. Freelancers sometimes live in a feast or famine time. Too much, or not enough. Add to this the chance that some clients don’t pay on time. 

An automatic remind sent at regular intervals takes the stress of getting that done off your shoulders. Invoice Ninja can help you follow up on those invoices that are outstanding. 

The reminders are sent up to three times, and if no action is taken, you can take the appropriate action.

Time Track

Do you know how long you are spending on shallow work, creative work, deep work, and admin? Most likely, you have a loose idea. But the more you know, the better you can arrange your work. 

Time tracking software can record when you are work and can change how you work in the future.

Time tracking software:

• Toggl
• Harvest
• HourStack
• Everhour
• Timely

Social Media Automation

This takes a lot of planning to handle well. Many people quickly hook up their social media to their blogs and let them run. But you can create a complete content campaign with microblogs and more. 

From one blog post, you can take essential sections, add those as captions. Create one for each of your platforms. Planning is vital.

Add these into your Planoly, Buffer, or Hootsuite. And you have now automated your content.

Create a social media campaign: 8 Steps to Creating a Social Media Campaign That Gets Results.

Virtual Assistant

Almost everyone will recommend getting a virtual assistant. They can handle things like pinning your content, researching for your projects, keeping your files in order, creating content for you, and so much more. 

Even a few hours a week will give you the space to get creative or get into your deep work.

Eliminate what doesn’t work for you, automate the things that bring in money but take up time, and find space to delegate the admin that can’t be automated or eliminated.