Keeping up with writing assignments

Who thought I'd be happy to go back to my regular schedule?  But I am, after the craziness of last week's long hours.  Suddenly my normal schedule seems easy in comparison.

I like sitting here on Monday, with the whole week stretched out before me like an untraveled road.  Inevitably I get behind on my journey and end up rushing to catch up at the end of the week, but the easy promise of Monday is well worth it to me.

Because most of my clients assign work on Mondays, I typically don't have any work yet on a Monday morning, and that's a good feeling too -- to know that it's coming, but to have those few hours beforehand, to have room to breathe and time to work on other things that need to be done.

Unfortunately, I don't get that this week, since I am finishing up last week's work still, having been unable to finish it all over the weekend.  This has happened only a few times, but I hate how the rush of having to finish the previous week's work bleeds into the current week's work, with no break in between.

It's a reminder of why it's a good idea to stay on top of one's assignments as a freelancer.  Not only does it keep the clients happier, but it's nice to divide work into week-long groups, so that you have the satisfaction of a little down time between the weeks' workloads.

What about you?  What do you find helps you stay on top of your client work?  So many writers are born procrastinators, so I think most of us find this concept pretty difficult, and we're always looking for a method or trick to make it easier on us.  What have you found that works?