You know that feeling where you’ve got plenty of time on your hands and are looking around for random jobs you can do to fill your time?
Me neither!
Time is a precious thing as a freelancer, so you need to be on the lookout for any opportunity to automate and prioritise the right things whenever you can.
What you spend your time on, and how long you spend on tasks, can literally make or break your business.
This is where we can look to productivity tools and software to help make our daily lives more efficient and effective. The right tools can help us to work smarter, and spend our limited time and energy in the right places.
So here are some of my tried and tested, favourite tools for productivity and for getting on top of your to-do list.
Table of contents:
Best productivity tools for freelancers:
1. Roam Research
It’s hard to really get across what’s so great about Roam Research until you try it for yourself. Their website describes it as a ‘tool for networked thoughts,’ which can all sound a little confusing.
For us, it’s been a game changer – so much so that we even have an upcoming course based on it.
It’s basically a note-taking app, but the genius is in the way your notes are linked together. It’s a little like creating your own Wikipedia, filled with everything you want to save and have access to.
It allows you to jump around your notes with ease, while also updating the same piece of information in multiple places at the same time.
I know it sounds confusing but it’s really simple to use if you have a system in mind and know what you want to achieve.
I use it to organise my projects, manage my daily tasks and write content. It helps me do all of this better than anything else I’ve tried.
It’s a paid tool – and a bit pricy at $15 per month – but if you set it up properly, it will be the main driver of your freelance business and help you to stay organised.
If the price is putting you off, you might want to consider Logseq – this is a free alternative which is extremely similar.
2. RescueTime
During those days when you’d rather do anything else but the actual work, how do you keep yourself from checking your social media every five minutes or reading the news when you should be sending pitches?
The answer is RescueTime.
RescueTime runs in the background, monitoring what you’re actually getting up to during the working day. There’s nowhere to hide – if you’re wasting time on social media, or browsing the news, RescueTime will know about it.
You set your working hours in the dashboard. Then, at the end of your working hours, you will see how much time you have spent on productive work and how much on distracting websites. You can also turn it off in your free time.
You will see exactly how many hours you have spent working, and you can get a productivity score based on websites you have visited during the day, the time you have spent on them, and the hours you have been working on them (the tool counts only hours that are in your working hours).
With the paid version, you get more features like a distraction blocker – but the free version is enough if you combine it with a website blocker like Freedom (more about that below).
RescueTime has completely upgraded its product recently and shifted more towards mindfulness and well-being. Personally, I’m still using the old version – RescueTime Classic – because I was using it entirely to track what I actually do during the day. Hopefully, they continue to support this version.
3. Freedom
Freedom is a website blocker – you create a list of websites you don’t want to visit during a certain time of the day (for example, you might want to leave social media for the afternoon, so you will block it in the morning).
It then stops you whenever you try to access them. It’s paid tool, but it’s very affordable, and you can install it on multiple devices.
It’s well worth the investment, and I’m sure your focus is going to sharpen if you combine this with the free version of RescueTime!
4. Range
We’ve recently started using Range in our team to keep each other accountable – it’s a great way to share your tasks for the day, your weekly focuses and any obstacles you might face. You can tag your teammates in the comments, so they receive notifications if something requires their attention.
It’s perfect for effectively communicating with your teammates, and committing publicly to your tasks for the day. Getting them down encourages you to use the power of accountability to actually do them.
You can use Range if you are working on a project with other freelancers, or as a place to keep your progress on the project transparent with your client.
We are using the free version of the tool, and even though it has a lot of limitations, we are finding it good enough for now.
5. Coming Soon – The Todo Clarity Tool!
Ever felt the frustration of an ever-growing to-do list, and not knowing what to do next?
Me too – that’s why I decided to try and solve this once and for all! I set about creating a simple tool to score each task based on many weightings and factors.
Things like how urgent it is, how likely it is to make you money, and how targeted towards your goals it is.
You set the scores for all of these factors and the unique algorithm crunches the numbers to spit out a 0-100 rating for how much you should prioritise that task.
You can then use this simple number to organise your to-do list by priority, knowing you’re working on the most impactful and achievable tasks first.
It truly is a game-changer and gives you a whole new level of clarity ad focus when it comes to getting the important things done first.
It will be launching very soon, so keep your eyes peeled!
For more productivity tools and resources – be sure to check out our popular and regularly updated list of resources for freelancers.
Related articles:
Is the Voice in Your Head Holding You Back?
How to Stop Procrastinating Once and For All
Roam Research: a Game-Changer for Freelancers and Solopreneurs
Leave a Reply