Design Principles For Your Freelance Life

So let's start with hierarchy.

In design terms, hierarchy is how things are ordered.

The most important gets the most attention, or the most important becomes the starting point.

So in applying the design principle of hierarchy to your business, it's about prioritizing.

And this relates to goal setting, and it also relates to actually getting things done in a day or in a week.

So you set goals, you set business objectives, you set creative project objectives, and you've got to get those done.

So to get them done, you need to make them priority over other activities.

So hierarchy is just basically looking at what you have to do in a week or in a quarter or in a day that's going to move you forward on projects and move you forward in your marketing and in your business and in whatever else you need to move forward in.

You make those the focus of your days.

So hierarchy is basically looking at everything you need to do and then deciding which is going to be the most important.

And then after that, which is the most important and so on down the line.

And what is the most important today may not be what was most important yesterday, or it could be the same.

I know when I'm working on client projects and there's a specific deadline, meeting that deadline and getting the project done and approved and out the door becomes priority.

And so that's what I focus on until the project is completed.

With everything that I have going on, and if you're like me, you've got a lot of things going on.

What is the first priority? And that's a decision that you have to make.

Often the priority is doing things that actually are going to make you money because you have to earn a living to pay for your life.

And so you're going to prioritize those things that are going to enable you to do other things that are necessary or important.

In my daily planning, and I do sit down in the morning and somewhat map out my day.

I'm not schedule oriented.

I am agenda oriented.

But the first things on the agenda are the priority tasks, the things I've got to absolutely get done.

With long-term projects, that priority can be the same thing for a number of days or a number of weeks.

And then the smaller things get less status in my day.

And I actually have an alphabetical system.