I'm a fellow freelancer. I don't, save for a very rough set of guidelines. May or may not be helpful, but I stressed out a lot about this when I got my start an

I'm a fellow freelancer. I don't, save for a very rough set of guidelines. May or may not be helpful, but I stressed out a lot about this when I got my start and found the "hippie" approach works quite well: - Wake up as early as your body allows. I'd rather be on a 10-6 schedule fully rested than a 9-5 schedule just to fit societal expectations. - Work as long as your body allows (as soon as you start to get foggy, stop or take a break). - Eliminate tedious distractions (disable notifications, turn your phone off, etc) but if you need some "noise," have a long-form podcast or interview in the background. - Don't get too caught up in systems (unless they help). Just have a running awareness of what needs to be done and "bins" (in the GTD sense) where you write down what comes next. Paper, an app, doesn't matter. - Do the work until it's done. Deadlines are a manager's tool that shift people's focus away from the work on to meeting the deadline/manager's expectations. I've found the less awareness I have of this, the higher quality of work I can produce and less stress. - Accept that you are you. Everyone is different, there is no fixed way to get things done. Experiment and find what works and then do that, adjusting as necessary.