Time... manage it!

2011 is over, and it was a rather busy year for me. I have this thing where I tend to remember things a little differently than they actually happened, like being busy when I really wasn't for example. ;) However, I'm 100% positive that I was busy this past year because I keep a pretty detailed work calendar.

It started off as a way to plot out all of my projects as they stacked up, so that I could be sure I had enough time to color my books. I just couldn't keep every detail straight in my head, so I needed to have it written down. After a few months of doing this, I realized that I could keep track of how many pages I color on a monthly basis. This kind of stat keeping has always appealed to me as long as I can remember, so for me it's more fun than it is a chore.

In 2011, I set a personal record for pages done in a year with 1207 pages colored. After posting that number to twitter, I had the thought that aspiring colorists might wonder how someone can color "x" number of pages in a given time, and that it might be informative to show my calendar from this past year. Also, based on the hits my previous "behind the scenes" post about Wonder Woman #4 received, it seems like people like a peek behind the curtain.

Another reason I wanted to post this, is to stress the importance of time management for a freelancer. You have an editor that's giving you a deadline, but hitting that deadline takes a lot of self discipline, which can be hard when you're sitting at home and a video game is calling out to be played, or the internet is begging to be surfed. As you can see below, there aren't many days in which I don't color something, but the info that is missing from my calendar is the hours worked in a day. Some of those days I do nothing but work, and other days I can manage all of my work and leisure activities/household chores, etc. A page can take anywhere from 1-3 hours to color depending on my motivation, the complexity of the page, and various other factors. Another thing to keep in mind when looking at the calendar, is that I don't flat any of my own pages, which saves me quite a bit of time.

Other functions that my calendar serves (which are not pictured here) are the dates I invoice a project, and the dates/amounts I'm paid for projects. It's important to keep track of all this stuff when you're a freelancer. If a company forgets to put your invoice in and you don't get a check, you need to know when it's time to bug them about it. Or if you blow a deadline because you just forgot it was there, well you're going to look like an idiot.

So, here's my calendar for 2011...

MW