Increasing Productivity for Freelance Writers - Time Management

I'm always on the look out for ways to increase productivity. Although I haven't written as much as I would like because of school work, I'm slowly gathering tools that are helping me to become more productive when I do find the time to write.

One of the most effective ways I've found to help me stay on task is using a timer. I've found a couple of online timers that will count down. I work in hours slots and give myself a 5 minute break, timing both segments. My favourite timers so far include:

• E.ggtimer - Very easy to set, just type in the minutes and press 'Go'. It'll make's about 2 beeps to let you know when your time is up. After the first hour of article writing, I then input 5 minutes for a break ... and so on. Very user friendly.

• FocusBooster - You can download the application onto your computer, but I won't be doing that. I'll just be using the online version that I linked to above. Click on the 'i' on the top right hand corner of the app to change the settings. The downside is that it only counts down a maximum of 40 minutes. You can set it to automatically start timing a break immediately after the 40 minutes. There's also a ticking sound, which you can switch off. The timer will make a short ringing sound when time's up.

My preference at the moment is for the E.ggtimer because I can set up an hour and it's more user friendly.