At the end of the day, do you ever find your­self won­der­ing where the day went? How many items did you get to cross off your to-do list? Do you even have a to-do list? One of the things that many of us strug­gle with on a daily basis is productivity.

The old say­ing is true—time is indeed money. And being more pro­duc­tive can have a tremen­dous impact to your bot­tom line.

If you can effec­tively man­age an addi­tional web­site project per month, how much have you increased your rev­enue for that month? Now mul­ti­ply that over the course of the year.

And notice I said effec­tively man­age. I’m not talk­ing about sac­ri­fic­ing qual­ity to take on addi­tional projects. We should all know exactly where that strat­egy will even­tu­ally lead. I mean work­ing more effi­ciently while still pro­duc­ing qual­ity work.

There are entire books and blogs writ­ten on the sub­ject of pro­duc­tiv­ity. I want to just share my rec­om­men­da­tions based on what has helped me. Every­one works dif­fer­ently so you will have to find meth­ods and a sys­tem that best fits your per­son­al­ity and work habits.

Also, don’t get dis­cour­aged when you have peri­ods of lower productivity—it hap­pens to the best of us. Just learn to rec­og­nize it and con­tinue to make adjustments.

Here are my top 10 pro­duc­tiv­ity tips:

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1. Begin with a clean slate

I don’t know about you, but when I have a clut­tered desk, or my office is in dis­ar­ray, that has an adverse affect on me. Same with my computer’s desktop—lots of screen­shots and other files on the desk­top and mul­ti­ple win­dows open can be very distracting.

Develop an orga­ni­za­tion sys­tem to man­age your clut­ter. It doesn’t have to be elab­o­rate. There’s a place for every­thing and every­thing has its place. Once it’s orga­nized, then take a few moments dur­ing each day to main­tain it so old habits don’t lead back to the same clut­ter issue.

Now you can focus more on the tasks at hand since you have removed a lot of visual dis­trac­tions around you.

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2. Plan your day

This is some­thing I still have to work on occa­sion­ally. It can be easy to slip in to what I call “reac­tion mode” where you let interruptions—such as impromptu client changes—dictate your sched­ule for that day. You end up spend­ing most or all of the day “putting out fires” and the tasks that you needed to com­plete end up tak­ing a back seat.

Of course, things are going to hap­pen that you will have to address. But if you start each day with a plan of action, you’ll be able to keep your focus so much bet­ter and get more done.

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3. Begin with your most dif­fi­cult task first

Most of have cer­tain tasks that we just dread for one rea­son or another. We find other things to do in order to avoid the task at hand and often that is when dis­trac­tions usu­ally occur.

But if we tackle that task first thing and get it out of the way, then it is such a relief to know you don’t have to face it later. Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is the enemy of pro­duc­tiv­ity so if we can be dis­ci­plined to address the tough issues head on, the rest will all be downhill.

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4. Take reg­u­lar breaks

We’re all human. We must have some men­tal down­time on a reg­u­lar basis or our pro­duc­tiv­ity can plum­met. It can be as sim­ple as get­ting up from the com­puter and going to grab a drink. Or per­haps go out­side and take a short walk to just get some sun­light and fresh air. It’s amaz­ing how much bet­ter you feel and how much your focus increases when you return.

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5. Be pas­sion­ate about your work

If we do work that we truly love, it won’t seem very much like work at all. When I used to work full-time and free­lance, I’d have friends won­der how I could stand work­ing evenings on the com­puter when I had been at it all dur­ing the day. I never saw it as an issue. I absolutely love what I do. I can’t imag­ine myself doing any­thing else. Sure, there are times of stress, but I wouldn’t trade it for any other job out there.

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6. Remind your­self of the big picture

It’s so easy to get caught up in the daily tasks and to-dos. We need to set aside time to take a cou­ple of steps back and look at the big picture.

Why do I free­lance? How does my work impact my family’s well being? What projects do I have com­ing up next month? In the next cou­ple of months? What are my goals for this year?

When you have a clear sense of where you going and how you’re get­ting there, then the how part of the equa­tion sud­denly becomes easier.

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7. Get up early or stay up late

How would get­ting up an hour ear­lier impact your pro­duc­tiv­ity? Per­haps you could catch up on all of your email cor­re­spon­dence and scan over the day’s RSS feeds and Twitter/Facebook posts dur­ing that time. Then with that out of the way, you can focus on projects.

Same with work­ing late. One of the qui­etest times in my house is when my wife and our two girls are asleep. I have found for myself that I am most pro­duc­tive dur­ing that time. Even if you just take an extra hour at night to plan your sched­ule for the next day that would make a big impact.

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8. Work in bursts

Along the lines of tak­ing reg­u­lar breaks, I have found it very effec­tive to work in bursts of time with a break in between. For exam­ple, I may work from 8–8:50 a.m. on Task A, then take a break and work on Task B from 9–9:50 a.m. Dur­ing that break time, I try to at least step away from my com­puter briefly. I may also use that time to reply to a cou­ple of emails or check Twit­ter and Facebook.

I don’t fol­low this pre­cisely to the minute all of the time. But I try to be mind­ful of work­ing in chunks of time, while ignor­ing email, Twit­ter or any other dis­trac­tions. You can set man­ual timers (such as kitchen timers) or use soft­ware apps to help with this process as well.

I also know design­ers who divide their day up so they work on one large project in the morn­ing and another in the after­noon. So exper­i­ment with what works best for you. It has to fit your per­son­al­ity and work­ing style or you won’t stick with it for very long.

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9. Break down large projects into man­age­able tasks

When faced with a large project, you can get over­whelmed with all that there is to do. So break it down into phases and tasks and set aside time to work on them one at a time. If you stick with it and work through the tough spots it will help keep the project mov­ing and dead­lines met. And the sooner you fin­ish, of course, the sooner you get final payment!

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10. Reward yourself!

All work and no play is not good for any free­lancer. Decide ahead of time what kind of reward you will give your­self for fin­ish­ing a cer­tain task or wrap­ping up a project. It can help moti­vate you through any tough times. It can be as sim­ple or as elab­o­rate as nec­es­sary. Just try to keep it fun and be creative!

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YOUR TURN:

Do you strug­gle with pro­duc­tiv­ity? What sys­tem or tac­tics have you found help­ful to become more pro­duc­tive? I’d love to hear your tips and sug­ges­tions on what works for you.