Stop worrying, start winning: three worry removers

My first non-technical talk, June 2014. For freelancers, agency owners and anyone running a digital team inside a bigger organisation. The idea: take the worry out first, then use the headspace to decide what winning means.

Worry comes in many forms. Have we got enough work? Too much? Can we pay that bill? Have I forgotten something? Is that client too demanding?

1. A cashflow spreadsheet

The one that lets me sleep. A simple system that tells you what you expect to earn, what you expect to spend, and what to put aside for tax.

Be cautious: clients don't always pay on time, projects take longer and instalments slip, freelancers cost more than planned, and tax bills are bigger than you think. Overestimate.

Keep it simple. A spreadsheet is fine; the forecasting in accounting tools isn't flexible enough.

Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is king.

2. A system for tasks

Not feeling organised is its own source of worry. I'm a bit of a productivity-system junkie: GTD, ZTD, TMI, Pomodoro, the perfect week. I was building my own hybrid, a system of systems:

• Capture and process. Get it out of your head into something you can find again.
• Break projects into tasks and look only at the next action. "Redo the website" is an elephant; "define the audience" is a task.
• Goals, and a few habits, one at a time.
• Review: plan tomorrow, check goals, file what came in.

3. Track all of your time

Even if it's just you and one client. All time spent on a client's project should be billable: if you're working on their thing, you're not working on someone else's. The phone call, those emails, that "quick" call all add up.

We thought we were good at it. Then, tracking properly, this month I billed an extra four days across three projects for time we'd never have billed before.

If I'm working for a client I'm billing for it, or I'm doing something else.

Then: winning

With less worry, set goals that aren't woolly:

• Up to nine key areas (business, a side project, home, and so on), borrowed from TMI.
• Milestones: the end game, half-life, five years, two years.
• Specific, measurable, with a date.

You will fail at some. With clear goals you can see you're still on the path. Pick yourself up and carry on (KBO, as Churchill had it).

More on this: take control of your time by putting a value on it and setting your goals in context. The monthly version is plan a month on one printed page.