What tools do you use as a freelancer?

[michaellee]

I recently left working for a single company and have embarked on my journey as a freelancer. The experience has been great since my wife and I welcomed our first child this year, so I can spend more time with them.

I figure freelancing falls under the category of Tech Careers so I'd thought I'd post here.

If you're a freelancer, I'd love to hear the tools you're using to keep yourself productive. Doesn't have to be code related at all.

My List (so far)
Evernote - I've used Evernote before but kind of lost touch of it. But after making the switch, I've found it to be invaluable. It's like my digital brain where I store as much as I can. I also love that I have access to it everywhere.

I use it to keep memos and notes as I work on my projects.

Todoist - I've recently discovered Todoist, a management app. I really like its simplicity and cleanliness. Plus there are native ios and mac apps to go with it.

In the companies I've worked for in the past, we've used Trello to manage tasks. But as a freelancer, I've found that Trello just doesn't cut it for me. I enjoy making tashs and sub tasks. Todoist allows you to add sub-tasks to tasks which is awesome for me.

[E_Wilson]

I don't freelance as much as I used to because right now I'm in school, but here's what I used when I was self-employed.

Google Calendar: for scheduling appointments

Google Docs: for sharing blog content and creating contracts, invoices, and other legal stuff

Paypal: for payments and exchanging deliverables (e-books, etc)

Basecamp: I like it now for project management with clients, but I'm looking for an alternative. If anyone has ideas, let me know.

Prezi: for creating presentations when I go to conferences or am ask to speak at events

Canva: for spicing up social media posts, as well as creating specific print deliverables

[michaellee]

Nice list! Thanks for sharing. Hope school is going well Are you studying to be a programmer?

I like it now for project management with clients, but I'm looking for an alternative. If anyone has ideas, let me know.

What exactly are you looking for? I've been in teams where they loved Basecamp, I personally like other solutions. Would love to hear what your pain points are and what you'd like to see in alternatives.

[E_Wilson]

Yes, I'm taking 2 CS courses. I work full time and I"m paying for class out of pocket. It's difficult, but I'm getting through it. What I can't afford, I try to find a MOOC substitute.

As far as alternatives, I'm a big OSS advocate, and I'm open

[Alex_Kitchens]

I work remotely so while it's not freelance, it's pretty close to it.

Asana - My Teams project management tool. It cuts down on a lot of email, and keeps us all in the loop. My days don't start right without looking at my task list. I also use it to track my quarterly goals, and my favorite list of all is my Skills Builder list. I use this to keep track of skills that I want to learn, and when I find great resources related to the task, I save them as a subtask. It works in line with my Quarterly goals to keep track of my progress. Here's a screenshot of how I use it.

Gmail, Calendar, and Drive - This makes moving from computer to other devices very easy.

Mitro Login Manager - A great password management tool.

Pocket - Stores articles & blogs that I want to save for reading

Buffer - I can schedule posts out Twitter & LinkedIn, rather than spam blasting everything at once. This works great with Pocket because I store articles I know I want to read, read them all at once, and buffer them out to my social platforms.

Harvest - Harvest is a time tracking tool, and it works really well with Asana.

GoodReads - I use GoodReads to keep track of the books that I'm reading and ones that I want to read.

[Alex_Kitchens]

I'm in the same boat as you on school, and I hope it's going well for you!

[michaellee]

Alex,

That's really impressive how you use Asana. I've tried using Asana before but couldn't get into the flow of using it effectively. I like how you use it to keep track of your quarterly goals.

What do you post to LinkedIn? I've thought about closing my account recently because I feel like it's a useless medium for me. I only ramp it up when I'm looking for a job and most of the time, it is a bunch of recruiter spam that comes through it. I would love to hear how you use it effectively.

Thanks for sharing.

[Alex_Kitchens]

Hey Michael, thank you very much! It took me a while to get used to Asana, but I decided to do an experiment where everything that I had to do was in Asana(rather than on my phone, on sticky notes, etc.) Asana's guides are also great for getting an idea on how to use it.

And keep the LinkedIn! You're right, it is full of a lot of spammy people & posts, but if you can filter that out, it is great for future connections. I recently used it to find Ruby Developers near me to start a Ruby group, and it has helped me land some interviews just by having a completed profile. I have found that it's a great way to stay connected and grow relationships with people who I've met in the community and at events and to get updates on their professional careers.

On updates, I post once or twice a week on stuff related to my current work, the skills that I'm working to grow, and my org-culture beliefs. My intent is to share something that my connections will find valuable, that they may want to discuss, and something that gives them a glimpse of my "voice & beliefs". My current employer hired me for that reason; we shared the same business beliefs of a No-Buzzword, No-BS environment where we under-sell and over-deliver.

As for spam, I ignore requests from people that I don't know where I don't see a direct purpose for the relationship(Like a random salesperson), just so that my connections are authentic and worthwhile. Just like Twitter, it takes some time to find your audience(something that I'm still doing).

I've wanted to get into using Evernote effectively, but I always revert back to Google Docs out of laziness. How are some ways that you use Evernote everyday?

[E_Wilson]

Thanks Alex, ditto for you.

[michaellee]

No-Buzzword, No-BS environment where we under-sell and over-deliver

YES! Love it. I like how you use LinkedIn, I will give it a second thought.

As for Evernote, it essentially has become my hub for capturing info. I use it to record a lot of notes of things I'm learning on various projects. I also use it to save articles I find on the web that I have found useful. I do this because, the sad truth is not all websites live on forever so, I want to capture the content so I can have access to it later.

I also use it to capture ideas quickly. I used to capture ideas in my task management apps, but the sheer volume would give me a bit of an overload where I would find my tasks daunting. So I created a designated note where I just create lists in Evernote.

Another use case is, I listen to a ton of Podcasts, but have discovered there's no way to "favorite" an episode. Which is weird since I'd love to go back and relisten or share it with others. So I've used an iOS app called Workflow to create an extension that will let me capture the title and a link to the podcast episode in the podcast app called Overcast. Once the info is captured, it appends it to a note saved in Evernote of all my other favorite episodes.

Cheers.

[michaellee]

Have you checked out Trello or as @Alex_Kitchens mentioned, Asana? I've used Trello and find it pretty good for project management. I've met folks who die by Asana.

[Alex_Kitchens]

Very Interesting! You are right, Asana or a task list is not the best place to capture info, and it's caused me headaches and lack of motivation many times do to the daunting size. You've motivated me to give Evernote another try!

I like the podcast idea as well.

[michaellee]

I stopped using Evernote. Mainly because of its huge amount of memory usage. Instead I've decided to use a folder in Drobox to sync all my notes. On the desktop side I use Sublime Text, since I can open an entire folder and Command + T to quickly search for a file name or CMD + Shift + F to search through all files. Not exactly Notational Velocity but it seems to work. On the iOS side, I use Editorial since it works well with Dropbox and also has nice features such as support for taskpaper and markdown files.

[Slade]

Oh man...seeing how you used Asana like that is just what I needed!
Thanks for the share!

[cauerego]

I love all tools cited here, although never heard of a few before, such as Asana and Todoist. Eventually I even use them, but...

As a Computer Engineer, mostly I use apple and google (including chrome, android, etc). Really. I'm also struggling a bit trying to use discourse instead of zendesk. And finally starting to use GitHub, which I should have done long ago. Nothing really replaces being able to google for whatever I need. It is just awesome, and completely understated. And please do yourself a favor and get Inbox, as gmail is so old now!

I've been using paypal, but that should soon change to bitcoin or w/e. Doesn't matter. Same thing for text editor. TextEdit, Smultron, TextWrangler and Atom are the current ones, but those change a lot over the years.

Pocket is freaking great, but not used for freelancing or working in specific. Dropbox is one of the best, but I never used it for syncing my work for my own or for sharing files with a client. I usually go for google drive if needed. Even LastPass I don't really need for my work as freelancer.

I guess what I'm saying here is I've never really needed any single tool as freelancer other than the most basic ones.

Except...

I'm still missing a good public ticket manager. Zendesk was good enough as a private one. I feel like Asana is way too overkill for a single freelancer, and still doesn't look like it offers anything public like I wished. I've also seen another one other than Trello on those lines "like google wave" (which was much more like gw, btw), but I can't remember the name. It's not sandstorm, and it's all private only as well. I guess it's too much of a "new" concept or maybe it is just a broken idea I've had.