Make $50? No Problem

This week, I was given the challenge by my Praxis course to sell something and make $50.Try over $800.

How it all started

June, 2016, I joined Upwork. In addition to freelancing there, I asked small businesses in my area how I could assist them. Building a clientele from scratch at the start of my career was slow going to be sure, but I did it.I polished my online profiles and added my past work experiences to my portfolio. This was when I was contacted by the big client. A kitchenware retailer needed me to produce showcases for their products. They sent me four plates and some silverware, and I sent them their video.Two weeks later, a pallet with over thirty boxes arrived on my doorstep. I was in business.This past week was incidentally the week I finished the entire project. As I progressed through the project, I discovered many methods that helped move the work along and boosted my productivity dramatically.Here they are.

Note your time

I was paid by the hour for this project, so time-tracking was a requirement. However, how I went about that was essential to my productivity.

How NOT to track time

DON'T track what you've done. Approaching this project with a mindset of tracking what you've already finished looks at the past, what you've already accomplished. You need to think ahead, place your mind where the project needs to go.

how you should track time

Track what you are going to do.I kept a tally in a 99¢ notebook of the moment I started work, and told myself how long I was going to work on what. Looking toward the future, I knew how long I needed to work in each area, and that getting distracted with anything else would put me behind schedule.Manually writing down when I started working gave me the motivation to keep working. After all, I was the one who had to write down when I stopped working, and doing so too early would only hurt me.

Focus Tasks

With THIRTY items to go through, I couldn't afford to do one at a time. The entire process involved *takes deep breath* researching an item, recording voice-over, editing voice-over, filming the item, editing the footage, linking it with the audio, color correction, fine-editing, effects and transitions, and rendering.Going through all of this for each individual item was NOT working. Taking a page from Ford's book, I made an assembly line for myself. I researched 10 items at a time. I filmed 5 items and then edited them all while eating lunch at Chick-Fil-A.Handling the workload in this way helped get me into the groove necessary to work quickly and efficiently.

Track Progress

Knowing where you've been helps you figure out where you're going. The notebook I talked about earlier that I used to track how long I spent on which steps of the process helped me figure out what was working and what was not. I don't know about you, but my memory is terrible. Keeping track of my progress helped my reevaluate and reassess where I'd been, so I could develop a plan for moving forward.

So what are you waiting for?

As I said, I made $800. That equated to around $250 weekly.Whatever you're good at, you can be better. Go to the nearest CVS and pick up a 99¢ notebook. You don' have to spend thousands to increase productivity. All you need is to note your time, focus your tasks, and track your progress.