My business planning approach is woeful – many of the projects I work on are so prone to slippage or re-allocation that I have given up planning further than a week ahead. Spending time analysing work rates on a spreadsheet does not appeal to me; much of the data that I use to generate estimates are simply in my head, distilled over years of experience.
Moreover, I’ve never felt the need to formally reflect on my experience with the clients I work with, as they have so far fallen into two clear categories:
- Utterly lovely, wonderful people who know exactly what they want, communicate well and pay on time
- Time-wasters who make the editorial briefing and scoping process into an ordeal, then promptly ghost me after receiving my estimate
So I felt in good company with Letitia Henville, blogging on Editors Canada recently (https://blog.editors.ca/how-freelance-editors-plan-for-the-year-ahead/), who confessed to a somewhat unstructured approach to planning and analysing her future work and goals, and invited other fellow freelancers to share their methods. It turns out we’re all experimenting with the right way to do these things, and that rings true for me – just don’t ask me for my ‘metrics’ …