The Workload Tracker I Use to Plan Projects Before Saying Yes

Running a freelance medical writing business requires more than writing. A large part of the work is project and time management. At any given time, I’m tracking multiple projects across different clients, each with its own deadline, fee structure, and review process. Some are confirmed. Some are still in scope discussions. Some projects are confirmed. Some are still in scope discussions. Others will not start for two months, but I need to know now whether I can realistically hold space for them.

This problem has become more complex as I’ve focused more on CME activity development, where projects often have longer timelines and more rounds of back-and-forth with clients.

I used to manage project timelines and time allocation in my planner, but as my project load increased, that strategy stopped being sustainable. So over the past month, I started experimenting with Claude to build a workload tracker designed around how I actually work.

Over the past month, I started experimenting with Claude to create a workload tracker designed around how I actually work, not how a template designer assumed I work. The result is a browser-based dashboard I now open every Monday morning.

The Weekly Dashboard shows all my active projects organized by workflow status: what’s waiting on me, what’s under client review, and what’s confirmed but not yet started. Each project card shows estimated hours, hours worked so far, deadline, and a note field for anything I don't want to lose track of. I can update each project’s status directly in the browser, and the dashboard remembers my changes.

The Capacity Planner shows, week by week, how my estimated project hours fit within my available working hours. It automatically accounts for local holidays and time off, so I don’t overcommit. Color coding makes it immediately obvious when a week is tight, when I have breathing room, and when I have capacity for additional projects.

I built this tool through conversations with Claude. I didn’t start from a template, write formulas, or code the dashboard from scratch myself.

I described my working context — where I'm based, how many billable hours I have per week, how I handle holidays. I described my projects the way I would to a colleague: "This is a webcast series. I’ll need to develop two slide decks with three rounds of revisions over the month of July."  Claude asked clarifying questions and helped build the structure, logic, and HTML for the dashboard. The underlying project data lives in an Excel file I own and can edit directly; the dashboard reads from that file and regenerates whenever I update the project data.

When my project list changes — a deadline shifts, a new project is added, or something moves from tentative to confirmed — I can describe the update in plain language, and the tracker reflects it.

I’ve also thought about what this means for the people I work with. It means I know what I can realistically take on. When a client asks whether I can start something in September, I’m not guessing. I can see whether I can realistically commit those hours. When I commit to a deadline, I’ve already checked it against everything else running in parallel.

It also means that projects I accept months in advance don't get squeezed when things get busy. Each project gets the focus it was promised because I confirmed capacity before saying yes.

You don’t need to know how to code or be an expert with AI tools. If you can describe your workflow, goals, constraints, and boundaries in plain language, you can start a similar conversation with an AI tool.

A good starting prompt:

"I’m a freelance [your field] working from [your location]. I typically have [X] billable hours per week. I’m currently managing [briefly describe your projects, deadlines, and project stages]. I’d like to build a simple dashboard to track project status, estimated hours, hours worked, deadlines, and weekly capacity. Can you help me figure out what this should look like and how to build it?”

The initial build took a few sessions. After that, updates take minutes. For me, the value was not just having a dashboard. It was having a system that reflects how I actually work — because I built it from my own workflow, constraints, and decisions.