"I'll be honest: I have difficulty finding time to relax", freelancer Chris Hardwick says. Photo: Sian Kennedy Time-management books command huge swaths of bookstore shelf space and sell tens of thousands of copies a year, but I always figured they applied more to stapler-stealing cubicle jockeys than someone like me. I am a freelancer. My services are available to anyone at any time. In a former life I was probably a whore. In this one, I am responsible for two cartoon voice-overs, three writing jobs, a movie soundtrack, my stand-up comedy act, TV hosting gigs, and half of a musical-comedy duo. Don't get me wrong; in this economy, I'm grateful for the work. But without any kind of 9-to-5 structure, it's a lot to keep track of.

Writer Chris Hardwick reveals the inside story of his feature on the art of organizational self-help. Spoiler: After three methods and six weeks, he's still a little disorganized. For more, visit wired.com/video. So how do I handle it? Poorly. My days are like eBay shipments: a few tangible things and a whole lot of packing peanuts. I obviously need help being the boss of me. So I decided to try an experiment: I'd spend two weeks absorbing, in succession, three well-known productivity systems and see if I could find one that worked for those of us who count income in 1099s instead of W-2s. I already owned David Allen's Getting Things Done; Gina Trapani, editor of the blog Lifehacker, further recommended Julie Morgenstern's Never Check E-Mail in the Morning and Timothy Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek. That made three, and three examples is all you need for a magazine article.

Getting Things Done

Day 1 I actually have three copies of Getting Things Done. I bought it on CD two years ago and never listened to it. A year later I bought the book, started it, and then stowed it under my nightstand. Then I bought it on iTunes. It mocked me from my iPod's Audiobooks playlist for months. Yes, I was having trouble getting Getting Things Done done. But now I have a deadline.

Day 3 Finally listening to Getting Things Done. I see why other nerds go for David Allen. He's a reductionist. GTD is all about breaking big tasks into small, doable ones. The book finds a million ways to repeat Allen's simple mantra. Ask yourself: "What is the next physical action required to move the project forward?" Repeat until everything in the world is finished.

Day 5 The most pressing item on my to-do list is a script for the Nickelodeon show Back to the Barnyard, on which I play a talking cow. It turns out that "Write talking-cow script" is the kind of task Allen would describe as "an amorphous blob." A series of things have to happen in a specific order to attain its completion. How will I write it? What is the next physical action?

Let's see. I have to make a scene-by-scene story outline. But in order to do that I have to review the premise that was assigned to me via email, which I can't do without an Internet connection, which I don't have because I am in Memphitucky trying to make a club full of strangers laugh by pointing out the foibles of mankind. The motor lodge I'm staying in has intermittent service at best. So there you go: My next obvious action is "Locate Internet."

A block away, I find a Starbucks—the yuppie McDonald's. Next action: "Download premise from email." Done. I'm building momentum! Next: "Break premise into a handful of scenes." Next: "Write one-page scene outline." And finally: "Expand outline into scenes with dialog." I know it seems obvious, but it was better than just launching Final Draft and staring at "Fade in." (Final Draft : screenwriters :: Excel : accountants.) My total script time from premise to delivery is four hours. That's not bad for an 11-minute cartoon.

Day 9 My girlfriend informs me that there's a black widow nesting in a drainpipe near our garage. I have now been on the GTD program for several days and am a next-action machine. I say out loud to myself in a robot voice, "Processing ... dot dot dot ..." I head outside, already planning my next action: "Pour water down drain to send spider on river rampage to Jesus." On the way, however, I discover a dead squirrel. Protocol interrupted. How do you dispose of a dead squirrel?

"Some days I'm just overwhelmed by everything on my to-do list," Hardwick says.

Photo: Sian Kennedy I return to the house with my bucket of water to ask the Internet. A state of California Web site informs me that I have to call the West Nile Virus Hotline. WTF?! I open a new tab and Google "West Nile deaths human California." Only one this year. Next action: Let air out of lungs. Back to west nile.ca.gov. From the photos, I identify the decedent as a Fox squirrel. While scrolling through, I notice that its cousin the Douglas squirrel is adorable! I throw it—the words, not the squirrel—at Wikipedia. Pine squirrel located in the Pacific coastal states. Huh. I jot down "pine squirrel" for use in as-yet-unwritten funny sentence. Back to the 'pedia. Naturalist John Muir described the Douglas squirrel as "by far the most interesting and influential of the California sciuridae." ... Sciuridae? How has that term managed to elude me for more than three decades? I click the link and learn that it's a family of large rodents—squirrels, chipmunks, marmots, and, uh, spermophiles. I wonder how you pronounce it. sky-yer-EE-dye? SURE-i-day? Goto: Merriam-Webster Online. Damn—it's a premium-account word. I'll have to slum it on Dictionary.com. Aha! sigh-YUR-i-day. I say it aloud several times, nodding with a false sense of accomplishment. The black widow is still alive. The Fox squirrel is still dead. And so are 35 minutes of my life.

Day 14 Wracked with guilt and a sense of failure, I resort to actual reporting and call David Allen. He's very nice and suggests that to effectively prioritize, I should explode my individual tasks into a philosophical framework incorporating my life's ultimate purpose. Oh, OK. That's all I have to do.

Freelancer rating: 4/5 The book is as dry as a camera manual. It took me two years to open my camera manual, too. Both turned out to be useful.

Change in personal habits: I can now shrink overwhelming projects into bite-size finger sandwiches, thereby unsticking my work flow. Also, I found out that I have a work flow.

Never Check E-Mail In The Morning

Day 1 Upon cracking Julie Morgenstern's book, I learn that she has consulted for Microsoft and Ikea, written five other self-help tomes, and appeared on Oprah. I become afraid that there will be chapters on "Scheduling Hugs" and "Filing Your Crying." This is because I am a jerk sometimes.

Day 2 Morgenstern breaks life into nine skill sets, or "competencies," all pointed toward finishing tasks with time left for recreation. Sweet.

Day 3 The book has a Choose Your Own Adventure vibe, where you can jump around to any area you want to improve. I read the whole thing. Most important, it turns out, is avoiding distractions. I have already failed by reading chapters that don't apply to me. The other usual distracters include perfectionism, procrastination, interruptions, and meetings. And email. Morgenstern calls these time-eaters "nibblers." Adorable!

Day 4 I wake up, and before I even think about it, I am checking my email. Crap.

Day 5 Same problem. Double crap.

Day 6 Crappity-crap-crap on a crap bun with crap relish! This is getting ridiculous. Despite my iPhone's pleas for clemency, I turn off the Push setting.

Day 10 Rob Zombie calls. He needs two more songs for his animated Mexican wrestler/superhero movie El Superbeasto, and he's about to mix sound. He wants same-day turnaround. That means Mike Phirman and I (we're the band Hard 'n Phirm) need to obtain the scenes in question and then write, record, and deliver each tune in six hours. No nibblers. No perfectionism. Interruptions will be met with a Shia LaBeouf-y "no no no no no NO NO!"

We make our deadlines. Mr. Zombie is pleased, which means he will not eat our faces. I can't say the music would have turned out any better had we agonized and labored over it.

Hardwick may now be "on his way to time mastery." Photo: Sian Kennedy Day 14 I call Morgenstern to brag about my success, and she asks what I do for fun. I am stymied: "Fuh ... Fuhhhh ... what is that word your mouth is saying?" Morgenstern thinks taking time off is crucial; since I'm around tech all the time, she recommends something nature-based. I head for Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Aside from the homeless woman shouting obscenities at a raccoon, it is strangely refreshing. I find a stone bridge where a copse of old trees hang over a brook, a setting so storybook I expect a faerie orgy to break out at any moment. Sitting there, I actually begin to get excited about my workload. I go home and work on my blog, the Nerdist, for an hour and a half—pure output. According to Morgenstern, I have found my "concentration threshold" and am now "on my way to time mastery!" I silently vow that once I have truly mastered the dimension of time, I will go back and tell my sixth-grade self to never bring Dungeons & Dragons books to school, where girls are.

Freelancer rating: 3/5 Half of the skill sets are more applicable to office dwellers. What about my needs?

Change in personal habits: I learned not to confuse "busy" with "productive," but I'm still far too addicted to email to resist its early-morning digital snuggles.

The 4-Hour Workweek

Day 1 Timothy Ferriss says he decided to become a productivity master after a girlfriend sent him a Dear John in the form of a plaque reading, The Work Day ends at 5:00. I would like to keep my girlfriend.

Day 2 I super-recommend the audio version of 4-Hour Workweek. The actor who reads it gives a Shatner-esque performance worthy of a Columbo villain. It made a three-hour drive from one stand-up gig in Tampa, Florida, to another in Fort Pierce enjoyable. Plus, he reads the word procrastinate as "procrasturbate."

Day 5 Ferriss' system basically amounts to finding ways to avoid doing your work. My first step: Focus only on the most important tasks. I am not doing that. I am in Chicago, covering Wired's NextFest for G4's Attack of the Show! At home, I would watch Mad Men on TiVo until I calmed down. Here, I wake up at 5 am, freaking out over the deadline for the very article you are now reading.

Then I have an idea: Why not simply start writing the piece? My anxiety over what to say has been causing me to put it off. So, without judging what comes out, I sit down and start typing away. I work for an hour and a half and write a considerable chunk. I feel so much better that I fall back to sleep for another couple of hours. When I wake up I feel confident, as if I am using a personal hygiene product that works just as its TV commercials promise.

Day 8 The next step: outsourcing! Apparently when you spend hours completing menial tasks, it actually costs you money, because you could be spending that time doing something more profitable. You might as well write a check to Failure.

The thought of my own foreign task force is instantly appealing. I find the virtual-assistant service Ask Sunday. (Readers: Mention "Chris Hardwick" to get me a huge discount.) For $39 a month I can make up to 15 requests—almost anything that's doable in 20 minutes. Here's what I send:

*Hello,

1) Please reserve a rental car for me at the Denver Airport. I'll be arriving next Wednesday at 3 pm and returning the following Monday at 10 am. Midsize car is fine, but it must have navigation system. You may use my Hertz #1 Club Gold number, because I am both a mover and a shaker.

2) Please find the closest Moose Lodge to Hollywood, California.

3) Please find a store where the Canon HF11 video camera is available near the zip code 90036.

4) Please list three types of monkeys that are native to Canada.

Thanks!*

Within an hour I have my rental car, learn of two Moose Lodges within 8 miles of my home, get the address of a camera store with one HF11 in stock, and receive this:

Hi Chris. Per your request, I did an extensive search regarding monkeys that are native to Canada. Unfortunately, I could not find the required information within the allotted 20 minutes.

At least I didn't waste half of one of my own hours to learn that there are no monkeys from Canada; this way I was freed to learn what sort of extramarital affair Don Draper is flicking ashes on this week. Side note: I applaud Canada for outsourcing its monkeys.

Day 11 Why defer your retirement until you're too worn out from busting your hump to enjoy it? Ferriss says we should take "mini-retirements" throughout our lives. I have a hunch that this used to be called "vacation," but I don't have much time to work that out. As I'm back in Chicago to shoot a segment for Wired Science, I decide to take a mini-mini-retirement: one day. I sit in Millennium Park, feed birds, silently judge others, and shout at kids to get off my lawn.

Day 14 I am exhausted from getting up in the middle of the night to write. If I ever do achieve a four-hour work week, I won't schedule it at 5 in the morning.

Freelancer rating: 5/5 Ferriss' MO seems aimed at enticing corporate drones to defect. Join me on the Dark Side!

Change in personal habits: I remain disorganized, but I now have a network of assistants looking up stupid shit for me.

To Sum Up

Allen, Morgenstern, and Ferriss are a nicely compatible family unit: David Allen is the practical dad who reminds you not to overcomplicate things; just get the job done. Julie Morgenstern is the encouraging mom who, while hugging you, says, "It'll be all right; you just need to focus on what's important here." And Tim Ferriss is the upstart kid who cries, "Think outside the box, man!" So in retrospect, it makes sense that I found it easier to cherry-pick elements from each and stitch together my own wearable cloak of efficiency. Now, I know that David Allen is the head vampire of productivity, but if you only have the fortitude to read a single book, I'm gonna throw my lithe frame behind The 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss lays out a series of nimble yet perfectly legal cons to help you break out of the corporate Bastille—and work from the actual Bastille, if you want. That sly creativity best fits the rogue nature of the freelancer.

Look, freelancers are "free" because they take risks—they don't like being told what to do. That's both exciting and daunting, because you have to police you. The trick to being both manager and employee is getting leverage on yourself. Still, joining any one of these time-management cults full-on seemed too much like getting a real job. I prefer to swipe the best ideas and ignore the rest. Further proof that I have the attention span of a procrasturbating pine squirrel.

Chris Hardwick (hardwicknerdarmy@gmail.com) does all the things he lists in the first paragraph.