What this template is for
Freelancers face a unique prioritization challenge: multiple clients with competing deadlines and no manager to arbitrate. When Client A's deliverable is due Thursday and Client B's is due Friday, which do you work on today? Add invoicing, proposals for new work, and recurring admin on top, and the cognitive load becomes overwhelming.
This template models a typical freelancer's week with seven tasks spread across three clients and administrative work. It demonstrates how Klara naturally balances your commitments based on effort, importance, and deadline proximity — without you needing to manually shuffle priorities every morning.
Example tasks
| Task | Importance | Effort | Deadline | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deliver brand guide to Client A | 5 | Days | This week | Client A |
| Review Client B's feedback on mockups | 4 | Hours | This week | Client B |
| Send monthly invoice | 3 | Minutes | End of month | Admin (recurring) |
| Build landing page for Client C | 4 | Days | Next week | Client C |
| Write project proposal for new lead | 5 | Hours | This week | New business |
| Follow up on unpaid invoice | 3 | Minutes | Today | Client B |
| Prepare quarterly tax estimate | 2 | Hours | End of month | Admin |
How Klara handles these tasks
The most instructive competition here is between "Deliver brand guide" (importance 5, Days, this week) and "Follow up on unpaid invoice" (importance 3, Minutes, today). Despite the invoice having a tighter deadline, the brand guide claims Do Now. The algorithm correctly identifies that the brand guide needs more of your remaining time and is more important. The invoice follow-up takes two minutes and can happen anytime today.
"Write project proposal" (importance 5, Hours, this week) also competes for Do Now alongside the brand guide. Both are importance 5 with this-week deadlines, but the brand guide's Days-level effort gives it higher urgency — it consumes more of your available time buffer. The proposal, needing only hours, has more slack and settles into Schedule It.
"Build landing page for Client C" (importance 4, Days, next week) sits in Schedule It or Later early in the week. Its next-week deadline gives it breathing room. But as the week progresses and the brand guide gets completed, the landing page naturally rises to fill the Do Now slot.
The recurring monthly invoice demonstrates how admin tasks stay out of the way until they matter. For most of the month it sits in Skip It at minimum urgency. As the month-end deadline approaches, it gradually rises — reaching Schedule It a few days before the deadline. This is exactly right: you should not be thinking about invoicing on the 5th of the month.
"Prepare quarterly tax estimate" (importance 2, Hours, end of month) is the lowest-priority item. At importance 2, it only surfaces when higher-priority work is complete or when its deadline is imminent. This reflects the reality that tax admin, while necessary, should never preempt client deliverables.
Tips for customizing
- Replace "Client A/B/C" with your actual client names. The specific names do not affect prioritization, but they make the project immediately useful.
- Add recurring tasks for weekly invoicing or time tracking. Set them at importance 3 with Minutes effort — they will stay in Skip It most of the week and surface briefly when due.
- If you have a retainer client with ongoing work, create a single task per deliverable cycle rather than one permanent task. Klara works best with discrete pieces of work that have clear completion criteria.