Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals

Loading…

Shoutout to my old client in Austin who forced me to try time blocking | Beat Burnout - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals

johnkelly•6mo ago

Shoutout to my old client in Austin who forced me to try time blocking

I used to just work until the job was done, but after a project ran 20 hours over, they made me send hourly updates. That rigid schedule felt awful at first, but it saved my weekends. Anyone else had a client push a system on you that actually worked?

5 comments

5 Comments

the_rose5mo ago

Remember my friend who fought her boss on making a project brief for every video edit. She thought it was stupid extra paperwork for a five minute clip. Then a client came back after a final cut saying the tone was all wrong, wanting a full reshoot. The brief they finally made had the exact words "upbeat and fun" saved in it, which the client had approved. They showed that to the client and only had to change the music track, not the whole video. She never complains about the briefs now.

the_sage6mo ago

Honestly, that hourly update thing sounds brutal. I had a client once who insisted on a full project outline in a shared doc before any design work. Felt like busywork, but it cut our revision rounds in half because we were all looking at the same map from day one.

tyler_morgan6mo ago

Yeah that upfront work always feels like a waste of time until you're three weeks in and nobody is asking for a total redo. I had a boss who made us write a one page summary of every project before we could even open Photoshop. Hated it at first, but it killed all the "I thought it would be different" talks later. Turns out forcing everyone to agree on the destination before you start driving saves a ton of gas.

sarah_davis6mo ago

Didn't my friend's team waste a month on a logo before writing anything down?

blair_torres705mo ago

Totally get what @tyler_morgan means about hating that step at first. My old team would just jump into making website mockups based on a quick chat. We burned so many hours on a homepage once because the boss wanted "friendly" and the client later said they meant "professional but approachable," which are not the same thing! Now I see that one page summary is like checking the address before you order an Uber.