The $0 Tasks Eating Your Freelance Week
Most freelancers don't have a time management problem. They have a time allocation problem.
You're booked solid, but your bank account doesn't reflect it. You're working constantly, but the numbers don't add up. You wake up looking at your calendar and think, "How did I get here?"
You're not bad at managing time; you probably have color-coded calendars, task management systems, and blocked-off focus hours. The problem is what you're spending those hours on.
You're replying to Slack messages that don't move projects forward. You're formatting client deliverables for three hours when the actual strategy work took one. You're on your fifth "quick call" of the day that wasn't on the original scope. You're spending Tuesday afternoon learning a new project management tool even though your current system works fine.
These aren't time management failures. They're time allocation failures.
Your best hours are going to be spent on $0 work: work that generates zero revenue, builds zero systems, and moves your business zero steps forward. Work that keeps you busy but broke. Work that used to energize you but now just exhausts you.
And here's what makes it insidious: most of this work is invisible. It doesn't show up on your calendar as "waste three hours on bullshit." It shows up as "client work" and "admin" and "just being responsive."
How do I know? I’ve been there.
I used to measure my days by how many things I crossed off my to-do list.
One day, I looked at everything I'd done that week and asked: "What did this actually earn me?"
The answer was brutal. Half of it made zero dollars. And the stuff that could actually move the needle? It got pushed to the bottom every single day.
So I built a process. A simple audit that helped me finally see where my time was going and what it was worth.
The first step to fixing this isn't another productivity hack. It's seeing clearly where your time is actually going, and being honest about what you find.
I built an on-demand workshop on this system called the $1K Time Audit. Here’s a sneak peek at the process.
Separate Your Work Into Two Buckets
Before you can audit anything, you need to understand that freelance work falls into two distinct categories:
Working IN your business (AKA client work): the deliverables, the calls, the revisions, everything you do directly for clients.
Working ON your business (AKA everything else): admin, systems, marketing, strategy, the work that keeps your business running but doesn't have an immediate paycheck attached.
Most freelancers only pay attention to the first category. Paying attention to working ON your business is one of the key boss mindset shifts you need to make if you want to be a sustainable business, not a task rabbit that sells anything to the highest bidder.
Build Your Ranking Framework
Here's how to categorize the work you do IN your business (for clients):
The $0 Work: This is what I call "the bullshit," work that generates zero revenue but eats up hours:
- Over-delivering on tasks the client didn't ask for
- Being micromanaged (constant status updates, out-of-scope edits)
- Task-switching between 10 different projects in a single day
- "Pain and suffering" (e.g., lying awake worrying about client emails, dealing with difficult clients who drain your energy)
The $50-100 Work: This is the "Goldilocks problem": work that's either too high or too low:
Too high: You're not great at it yet, so it takes longer and delivers less value to the client. Maybe you took on something outside your wheelhouse, or you're building a new skill.
Too low: You've mastered it to the point of it being brainless. Someone else could probably do it faster or cheaper. You're really good at it, but when it shows up on your calendar, you think, "Not this again."
The $500+ Work: This is your superpower:
- Feels like rocket science to everyone else, but you can do it instinctively
- You're twice as fast at it as anyone else
- It's still challenging enough that you actually love doing it
Now, here’s the big caveat: you don’t do this once and then run the same business for the rest of your life. Our businesses will always be a combination of all three levels because we evolve as we learn; what was once your superpower may be your $50 work in a year; what was “too high” will become your superpower. The key is paying attention, so you’re not stuck in a business you’ve grown to hate.
And then there are things we do that are priceless, like showing up human-to-human for clients and colleagues: sending a thank you note, talking a peer through a problem, buying your best client a gift when they need a pick-me-up. Not everything is about money, and an hour spent here is often worth more than anything.
Evaluate Your Business Work Differently
For the work you do ON your business, the criteria shift. Use these categories:
Admin: Can someone else do this better, faster, or cheaper?
Systems: Are you solving real problems or theoretical ones? Are you building things that make future work more efficient, or procrastinating by "fixing" things that aren't broken?
Networking/Marketing: Are you testing things out randomly, or implementing clear, targeted strategies based on what you've learned?
Strategy: Are you reflecting on what actually worked and creating short-cycle goals, or copying what you saw on Pinterest?
Here's a personal example: I do all my own bookkeeping. I handle all my billing, and I love it. I'm kind of OCD about my business finances, and I like to manage them all myself. But there’s a threshold there; right now, I have enough time to do that, and I’m pretty good at it, which means I’m fast and effective. There may come a day when that’s no longer true for my business, which means I’ll have to make a different decision.
That lands differently when you admit you love bookkeeping versus white-knuckling through it because you think you "should" do it yourself.
Build YOUR Criteria (Not Mine)
Here's where most people get stuck: they try to use someone else's framework exactly as written.
Don't.
One participant asked: "What if something is my superpower and I'm good at it, but I don't enjoy it?"
I told her to put it in the "too low" category. Because if you're spending all your time doing $500+ tasks that you hate, what's the point?
Another participant couldn't categorize a major part of their client work: "It takes me a long time, longer than I would like to, but it is valuable for my customers and it's not necessarily something I enjoy doing 100%."
This is the messy reality of freelance work that productivity advice doesn't account for: Sometimes the thing that makes you the most money isn't the thing you're best at, and it's definitely not the thing you love most.
The framework isn't about simple categorization. It's about creating your own criteria—skill level, preference, value to client, BS level—and then being honest about what you see.
Audit Your Actual Week (Not Your Ideal Week)
Pull up your calendar. Look at last week, or pick a representative week that shows what you typically do.
List out everything. And I mean everything:
- Client deliverables
- Emails and Slack messages
- Admin tasks
- The two hours you spent learning a new project management tool, even though your spreadsheet works fine
- That thing you've been moving on your to-do list for three weeks
Now rank each task using your criteria.
What usually happens here: silence. The "oh shit, I see it now" kind of quiet.
Because you start seeing patterns:
- 50% of your week might be $0 work
- Things you used to love are now just "neutral"
- You're spending prime hours on work someone else could do cheaper
- You're procrastinating on actual strategy by solving theoretical problems
Identify the Sneaky $0 Work
The hardest things to identify are the invisible time sucks that don't show up on your calendar.
One participant realized: "I have some time suck stuff that's not adding value, that's not really on this chart. I'm not going to capture replying to a stupid email that has no value add but the client wants this thing."
Exactly.
To find these, you might need to look beyond your calendar:
- Your task list
- Your inbox
- Your Slack activity
- How many times you checked email today
- The "quick client edit" that took three hours
These are the $0 things creeping in that you don't even realize are there until you actually look.
Decide What to Shift (Using Four Strategies)
Once you've identified what needs to change, you have four options:
- Let it go: What if you just stopped doing it?
Earlier this year, I stopped doing my podcast. It freed up hours every week. But it also had implications: that was one of my main content engines. I had to think about different ways to produce content for my audience.
- Limit it: Place boundaries around it.
Check email three times a day instead of 15. Batch client calls on specific days. Stop being available on Slack 24/7.
- Structure it: Build systems to make it more efficient.
I used to manually send emails for a project every week. Then I built an automation. That task went from one hour per week to one minute. Did I bill the client less? No. It's a flat-rate contract. I'm still delivering the same value, I'm just doing it better, faster, and cheaper for myself.
- Outsource it: If someone can do it better, faster, or cheaper, delegate.
But here's the thing: None of these are silver bullets in isolation.
Acknowledge That This Isn't Simple
Here's what gets missed in most productivity advice: this work is nuanced.
One participant shared something that's probably true for you too: "I'm looking at something that is medium-high effort and medium value. It makes me a decent amount of money, but it's a fuck ton of work and it exhausts me. Where do I put that?"
I walked them through applying additional criteria: What's the value to your client? What's the value to your business model?
They realized: "It's my biggest work. It doesn't even really fit in my business model."
That's not a "stop doing it tomorrow" realization. But it IS information that helps you make better decisions going forward.
This is why it's not black and white. We all do things in our business where we're like, "This thing makes me a lot of money, maybe I don't love it as much as this other thing, but the money I make doing this thing allows me to make less money doing these other things."
Understanding the Ripple Effects
Here's what makes this complicated: every decision about how you spend your time has ripple effects across your entire business.
This is why I use the Sustainable Scale Framework as the foundation to balance all of this:
When you change one thing, it impacts everything else.
If you decide to stop doing "too low" work, that might mean:
- Raising your rates (pricing shift)
- Changing who you serve (client shift)
- Restructuring your packages (business model shift)
- Hiring someone (capacity shift)
- Setting new boundaries (relationship shift)
It's not a simple "let it go, limit it, structure it, or outsource it" checklist. Each decision represents a choice that might impact your pricing, your business model, the types of clients you serve, your capacity, your boundaries, everything.
What Comes Next
One participant summed it up: "I like the framework a lot. I feel like I would need about three to four times as much time to actually do each of these steps. I almost want six copies of this so I can do it every other month or something."
That's exactly right.
This isn't a one-time exercise. It's a regular practice because your business constantly shifts.
The thing that's "just right" right now may become "too low" in a few months. The thing that's "too high" may become your new superpower.
What you used to love might become neutral. And what feels neutral now might become something you love again once you change the conditions around it.
The point isn't to achieve some perfect calendar where every hour is $500+ work you love.
The point is to stop waking up one day with four hours of work on your calendar that makes you think, "How did I get here? I don't want to do that."
The point is to make conscious decisions about your business model instead of just reacting to whatever lands in your inbox.
The audit isn't about squeezing more productivity out of your day. It's about reclaiming hours for income-generating work and the rest of your life.
Because what's the point of running your own business if it runs you?
If you want the full $1K Time Audit system + the fully customizable workbook, you can get instant access here.