Project Management Skills Every Freelancer Needs

Learn how to effectively manage your client work.

Anna Burgess Yang
6 min readAug 28, 2024
pop art illustration of the disorganized top of a freelancer’s desk, covered with notebooks, pens, coffee cups, and a laptop
Image created via Midjourney

It all starts with a single client. One client becomes two clients, and now you’re keeping track of two sets of deadlines and deliverables. Two becomes four, and suddenly, you’re juggling a lot of projects with moving parts.

Almost all freelance work requires some project management skills. Your clients aren’t going to manage the work for you: it’s up to you to determine your bandwidth, communicate with your clients, and deliver as promised.

Before I became a freelance writer, I was a product manager at a tech company — a job that required a significant amount of project management. Those skills made it a lot easier to pivot from a corporate life to a freelance life.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by project management, here are the top skills you should look to improve.

Organization

Once you move beyond a single project, a simple spreadsheet won’t be enough. You’ll need a system to organize everything your clients give you.

My clients give me a lot of info, from a project brief to internal messaging docs. I also end up with research, interviews, and other stuff to get my work done. At this point, I’ve worked with more…

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Anna Burgess Yang

Freelance Writer. Operations Advice for Solopreneurs. Career pivots are fun. 🎉 https://start.annabyang.com/