IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO BE BUSY, SO ARE THE ANTS.
THE QUESTION IS: WHAT ARE WE BUSY ABOUT?
Henry David Thoreau
What 1 word expresses how you feel about how you spend your time right now?
Capacity and planning is the top of the iceberg, the bottom of the iceberg is your mental and physical health.In a creativity-focused business, those things weigh heavily on your profitability.
They don’t make it impossible (I’ve done this for 10 years with chronic illness, family emergencies, toddlers, etc.), it’s just a consideration to keep in mind. However, that’s the risk we’re taking on when we move into a creativity-focused field. There’s no “sick day policy” when you freelance, or paid disability, unless YOU make it.
Writing is the ultimate knowledge work. Knowledge work comes from the brain, your ability to focus, your ability to learn and grasp and push for new things. You can’t do any of that if you don’t feel alert and engaged. You also can’t get faster at it as you go if you aren’t healing and rejuvenating your memory. That’s my core idea for today that might seem random, but I want to save you hears of strain. As much as we humans try to forget it, you have a body. Fuel your body. Move your body. Listen to your body. And you will do the best work of your life.
So when we start to talk about scheduling and capacity planning:
- You can handle more on your schedule if you’re at 100%
- You have the capacity to deliver more if you’re at 100%
- The further you fall from 100%, the more of a threat there is to your ability to schedule and deliver high-quality work
But think about the upside. You have the time, freedom, and resources to achieve your best health (mental and physical), and when you do that… YOU get to keep the rewards 😉
Let’s define our terms:
- Scheduling: How work falls on a calendar, when deadlines will fall, and when you will do different parts of a project
- Capacity: How much work you can do in a given time period, how many clients you can serve best at once
SCHEDULING: How work falls on a calendar, when deadlines will fall, and when you will do different parts of a project
There’s no normal when it comes to scheduling, there are only the rhythms you fall into. Mind-blowing moment: reading about an entrepreneur who took off the last week of the month to rest. 🤯 You get to decide what normal looks like based on the income you need for your lifestyle and security. Maybe you don’t take calls from M/F like me! Maybe you ONLY take calls M/F. What’s it going to feel like to choose for yourself?
Your basic marketing manager expectations:
From a client perspective — so this may vary — most clients realize a need and want to act right away, but there are different ways to go about that that give you a lot of information
- 🚩= We need someone to get started on this right away (This is not important or valuable, we just need it done)
- 🟩= This is a priority so we’d like to start whenever you’re available (This has become hugely important, and we value it)
“Normal” expectations (Knowing normal is made up):
- Schedule intro call within 3-4 business days
- Schedule follow up or kick off within 1 week
- Blog deadlines 1-2 weeks
- White paper deadlines 6-8 weeks
- Larger projects 8-12 weeks

Never hurt yourself for a deadline, but give notice for any changes. Marketing is not life and death. Except in rare circumstances like when a launch has been planned for a long time and has moving pieces, you can almost always wiggle the timeline or schedule. The key is communicating that as far in advance. It’s not that deadlines can’t move — it’s that clients want to be in the know about changes, especially when money is involved
What a schedule might look like
Full-time (40+ hours)
This is your typical 8-4PM. Work expands to fill the time allotted — create your own structure or be doomed. A 40 hour work week is a 25-30 hour writing week — you can’t expect to write excellent work 8 hours per day
Part-time (30 or fewer hours)
This might be a handful of full workdays (8-4PM) or 3-4 hours per day all week. Know thyself – take your flex work during quiet times. You can’t just pick up and put down intense focus stuff so chunk your process (outline, research, copy, finesse) so you can work on pieces at a time
Parenting, Caretaking, or Chronic Illness (💩)
This is a free-for-all where all work is built around the rhythms of your life (This is liberating for some, torture for others). Chunk your process (outline, research, copy, finesse) so you can work on pieces at a time. Do more chores/tasks during non-work time when responsibilities are up so that ALL time off-caretaking can be balanced between sleep/self-care and focused work. During periods you know you might be able to focus, take work offline (journal, print out, etc.) such as kids at the playground, caretaking doctor’s appt, etc.
Recommended technology stack (“Tech Stack”):
- Calendly – Create a bookable schedule around your needs
- Zoom – Record calls (even if you don’t do video)
- Descript – Capture transcript of calls
CAPACITY PLANNING: How much work you can do in a given time period, how many clients you can serve best at once?
There’s another reason I started with your body and self-knowledge. Because your capacity is entirely unique to you. There’s no normal “writer capacity.” One person can write a blog post in 2 hours… another person needs 5 hours. Faster writers are favored in freelance, but it’s not impossible to do well if you take your time.
Normal writer capacity doesn’t exist, also:
- 1 hour per 150 finished words (Blog post might 5 hours)
- Overbudget the time you need and win
If you are a “slow writer” (which just means you write slower than YOU would like) there are things you can do to become faster. Practice the heck out of the writing you want to do, work with a solid outline process, then decide when the work is done — perfectionism can really take a toll here.
The thing about capacity is that we are not airlines. Airlines sell 100 seats on an 80-person plane, knowing some won’t show up. But if we do that, all the work shows up! And if we overbook and we can’t push someone from a flight, we get worn down and burnt out trying to deliver on what we promise. The work suffers, we suffer, the client suffers.
The goal is to have a steady amount of work, not too much, not too little. But guess what? The person that used to make sure your work was regulated was your boss. You’re the boss now, so this is a whole secret skillset you might need to practice before you get it right
In reality, there will always be highs and lows and busy seasons. The trick is learning to stand up for what you need re: vacations, income, etc. The only way out of this is to turn down work — there is no way to set it up perfectly so no one asks for more than you can give — that’s not going to happen.
That’s why you need to charge 2-3X — so you have time to do what you need to do even if you don’t have a creative day. You can leave blank spots on your calendar and still have a normal, regular income. This is where the conversation turns to hustle and drive verses planning and rest… we need both. Rest and action are synergists, not opposites (Jade Teta). “I have a hard stop at 2:30PM.”
You also need to get started with a client as soon as possible so you can see that you won’t be writing the whole time. A blog post might take 4-5 hours to write… But there are two half-hour phone calls, note-taking and thinking from those phone calls. and rounds of edits. When you see * how much work there really is * you start to understand that a $500 rate is actually a sweet deal
3 Things you need to do learn about your capacity
- Choose a regular tracker to develop the habit of seeing how long things take you (Invoicing software, Toggle, Kitchen Timer, Pomodoro = Tomato. Writing frenzy.
- Record your knowledge of how long it takes you to do things like a blog post for a client, white paper, invoicing, etc.
- Include daily buffer time so you can have steady profitability
- Schedule X-20% hours from what you plan to work
- Don’t plan for 8 hours of work
The “Pomodoro” power set (Ed Gandia) (25-10-25)
- 50 minutes concentrating
- 20 minute break (off screens, no open loops)
- 50 minutes concentrating
- On a good day you can do three sets of this for a 6 day creative work output — most days you will only do 2!
- So plan around 4 hours of creative work and 2 hours of administration and supportive work (or time off)
- Create more flexibility
The marketing conundrum: Keep marketing, even if you’re not available
But then people want to work with you and you can’t do it!! 😩😩😩
The simple truth is that you’ll have to say no to someone at some point. It’s painful… it’s fear-inducing… but it must be done.
How to always have room for the best clients
- 1) Keep an hour free each week for work you’re dying to do just in case – if no one books it, you can catch up or take a day off
- 2) Say thank you, refer to someone else
- Build your network, pay it forward
- 3) Say thank you, delay the start date
- Some people book out 2-3 months in advance
REAL LIFE EXAMPLES
Zero to Paid (Course)
- Scheduling and capacity “year in the life” in my experience…
- $35,000USD/year ($3,000/month)
- $30/hour, $50-$125 per blog post
- 20-30 assignments per month, 4-5 deadlines per week
- About one deadline per day, low cost
- $35,000USD/year ($3,000/month)
- $89,000USD/year ($7,500/month)
- $75/hour, $150-$325 per blog post
- 20-30 assignments per month, 4-5 deadlines per week
- About one deadline per day, medium to high cost
- $169,000USD/year ($14,000/month)
- $125/hour, $500-$1200 per blog post
- 15-20 assignments per month, 2-3 deadlines per week
- About .5 deadlines per day, medium to high cost (mostly high)
CONCLUSION
Your capacity grows and falls with your stresses and ability to focus. Take the pandemic into account, too — it’s a secret added stressor, but also think of stress, focus, and generally how you’re feeling as essential to your productivity.