With the Holidays barreling down on you like a rabid moose, it’s sometimes difficult to handle all the craziness and maintain your work discipline. Family gatherings, shopping, parties, and the occasional over indulgence can all wreak havoc on your schedule and run the risk of making a few of your clients very unhappy. As a freelancer, keeping happy clients is a never ending task to ensure positive representation (marketing) of yourself. Bringing your ‘A’ game never takes a break, not even during the holidays.

What to do? What to do? Don’t think it means you have to exclude yourself from all the festivities and fun. You don’t. After all, one of the reasons you became a freelancer was to have flexibility with your schedule. This does not negate your responsibilities to your clients though. If you have a project that has a deadline near an upcoming event, come in under deadline. When taking on new assignments, allow yourself a decent sized buffer. Build in time for any amendments or tweaks the client may request to the finished project.

The key to success is communication, but in these busier times of the year, such as the holiday season, it becomes even more crucial. Most people understand the hustle and bustle of the fall and winter months and will appreciate you keeping them in the loop. But, having said that, it will really make them mad if you fall short on a deadline and the reason you give them is the “being so busy this time of year” excuse. A heads up will go a long way.

The busy Holiday season is a great opportunity to reconnect with those clients you haven’t worked with lately, and to touch base with those you are working with. Find out what their plans are for the Holiday, will they be closed? open? off, but checking in? This does a few things: (1) it allows you to finalize your plans by syncing your work days to the majority of your clients, and (2) allows you to strengthen your relationship by finding out some personal plans and interests of your clients.

You know you can do it all. How? You need to apply a slightly different version of your usual time management. You need to figure out the order in which you will prioritize. Want to know what moves to the bottom of my list? Sleep. Catnaps become my best friend beginning in November all the way through February. I can re-prioritize things once everything settles down again. Then again! That’s one of the beauties of freelancing.

So have fun and enjoy the parties and festivities of the Holidays. But first, communicate with your clients and keep them happy! Happy Holidays!!