Why is it that when you have plenty of work to keep you busy, you tend to find more work then when you have nothing to do? The when it rains it pours theory. The more work you take on the more inquiries you seem to have to push away due to lack of time.

You obviously want to snatch up some projects before the inevitable dry period where you have no work, but how do you divide your time without becoming burned out overwhelmed and overloaded.

It takes a pretty good mix of your free time, your work schedule, your personal life, and your social life to make it work.

Personal Situations

One of the largest contributing factors you need to look at is your social and personal situation. Are you going to be able to bring that time to your clients without outside factors eating up those valuable hours.

Distractions at home, friends, family, and significant others all can take time that you had originally devoted to the project. The amount of time that you spend with others is a large factor in how much work you can take on. Simple things like phone calls, grabbing dinner with a family members, going out with a group of friends all takes a lot of time away from your available pool of hours. Budget accordingly.

Scale it Out

All of us have worked on projects that seemed to drag on forever. Inevitably they become the project that we dread working on. So how do you keep a mix of projects that keep you moving and keep you motivated? The answer might be to take on one or two large scale projects and fill in the gaps with the smaller projects.

Most often large scale projects get put on hold for various reasons for days or sometimes weeks at a time. This most often happens several times during the life of those types of projects. This is a prime opportunity to get your mind off that project and focus on a quick one or two day project or set of updates. You know these sort of breaks are going to happen, so why not budget some in between time to get your mind out of the soup, and onto something new and exciting.

To many small projects can be a bad thing as well. Never getting in and getting total focus on a project is something that I often suffer from when doing miniscule tasks. Jumping around on tasks keeps me distracted and not focused.

Be Proactive

There are always going to be times that work isn't flowing in. Out of season, holidays, tax time, whatever the situation people aren't opening the pocket book. This is a vital part of business and it's always going to happen. You should have been ready for it.

Start with your client list, it is your best friend. Start calling, or blast out an email and see if anyone needs something updated and just hasn't gotten around to calling you. Include a coupon in that email giving them a reason to call now rather then later.

The point is that since you know that things are going to slow down, have a plan in place. Bring those clients back to you instead of you have to search out new ones.

If you don't keep a client list, shame on you!