Personally, I feel that content management is the key to good time management. Recently, I worked for a design firm that had its client files across various servers, in possibly one of the most unorganized systems I’ve ever seen. I, along with co-worker, spent hours search for a simple logo file within a clients folder.

While I have not found any reliable software to help me manage client files (if you know of any, please let me know), but I feel like I have a system down that works. I have one hard drive for current clients and another for past clients (current clients are also backed up on the past clients drive and both drives are backed up on an additional drive and on DVD’s quarterly). Since my work is primarily web, I will normally have a file system like this: Client Name\Files\Project Name\ -> (Folders: Logo, Images, Backups, Mockups, etc.) and Client Name\Site\ -> (website files).  I try to use similar names for each client, that way I know exactly where to look for a certain file.

Sometimes, I think that if its taking me a long time to do something that normally takes me a short amount of time to do, I’m probably not in the frame of mind that I should be in. I think that it hurts to continue to work on this aspect of a project while still in this frame of mind. So instead of wasting time,  and not producing anything that pleases my eye, I’ll move to another aspect of the project and then go back to it. I try to log exactly what I have done along with the time spent on it in a timesheet within each clients directory. Periodically, I will assess my project time with my used time and see if any adjustments need to be made, based on how far along the project has gone. If I have used 50% of the time and am only 10% completed, I might consider speaking with the client as soon as possible to alter the quote or (the preferred way), see if there is a way I can accommodate by completing the rest of the project with the remaining time (or minimal time over the time remaining). I think it’s good to check up on yourself and not get lost in time. Doing frequently this also allows for more efficient and accurate quoting in the future.