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11 Essential Freelance Tools to Make Your Life Easier

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When pursuing a freelancing career, you may feel a bit lost from time to time. Fortunately, there are tons of freelance tools you can use to make it easier for you to complete tasks and stay productive.

Before we start talking about the best tools to make it easier for you, let’s remember that freelancing is just one way to work, and not an easy one. You don’t sit down and hope to magically get a project via email.

Being a freelancer means building your own professional network to get new projects going, as well as being capable of managing your time and resources in the best way possible.

If you’re already well-adjusted to freelancing and your business is up and running, go through these suggestions to improve your daily routine.

Organizing & Online Project Management Tools

Being organized is key when you’re working on multiple projects and teams, so here are a couple of tools that will help you.

1. Asana

Asana is the perfect tool to keep your tasks clear and well-organized, set deadlines, and assign tasks to teammates. It’s straightforward to use and user-friendly.

This is particularly useful when juggling multiple projects at a time with different teams in the same organization. Also, Asana’s design is simple and allows you to visualize your tasks as a list as part of a project or a calendar.

There’s a desktop version as well as a mobile app to connect with remote team members, assign tasks, and set due dates for multiple projects at a time.

The only downside is that you can’t switch accounts if you’re logged in with your email for a specific client and need to check other client’s workflow.

2. Shift

Having multiple email accounts frequently happens when working for different clients or companies, so Shift allows you to have them all in one place.

The tool — which can also work with extensions — lets you bring all your apps together in a simple workspace.

How to Focus Better

Don’t worry, there are many ways to get your focus back and get the work done. Here are a few tools that can help you with that.

3. Pomofocus

Focusing to get a simple task done is difficult when you’re working remotely, especially during a lockdown or when you’re in a loud office space.

If you struggle to focus on a task from start to finish, this tool will allow you to complete small tasks using a timer. Once you get small tasks done, your project will be ready, and it’s easier to get things done that way.

4. Freedom

Let’s face it, when working as freelancers there are hundreds of things that distract us from our daily tasks. There’s Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, the news, Netflix, some random blog you don’t know how you ended up on scrolling; then, you must try this app that blocks distracting websites.

Freedom works with a daily or weekly schedule, and according to their numbers, you can gain an aver­age of 2.5 hours of produc­tive time each day.

5. Momentum

Besides getting a good cup of coffee, this Chrome extension is an excellent way to start your day.

Once you open a new Chrome tab, you get a new inspirational quote, a beautiful and wholesome picture from around the world, and a reminder of your focus for the day on every new tab.

Online Design Tools

Unless your area of expertise is design, chances are you don’t have much time to spend on creating social media designs, presentations, intros, or visual assets in general.

6. Placeit

When time is not on your side or you just want to get professional results quickly, you can use this online tool to get your visuals ready without paying for expensive editing software or licenses.

Placeit offers a variety of designs for social media and mockups and free templates you can customize and download to use freely.

Communicate Effectively

Nobody in this world can succeed alone. You must communicate with your customers and teams in order to get your projects going, so here are some tools to help you communicate better.

7. Slack

In the professional world, communication needs some formality, especially when you don’t know your customers personally, and things can get misinterpreted from time to time.

Instead of using WhatsApp or social media chats, try using Slack to stay in touch through an IRC style tool. You can create a chat room for a specific topic, a private group to discuss a project with a few people, or message them directly.

8. Grammarly

We’re human, and we all make mistakes, especially when we’re tired or have been multitasking all day long.

Suppose you’re not precisely a grammar freak but want to communicate appropriately with teammates and customers. In that case, Grammarly is a pretty powerful tool to deliver the best results in your written communication.

You can either use the free grammar checker or subscribe to a premium version that detects plagiarism.

9. Miro

Current social distancing has made it harder to brainstorm during meetings. If you’ve been a freelancer for quite some time, you know you can’t bring a whiteboard with you to every Zoom meeting because it’s not practical, and is not visually appealing.

Fortunately, Miro allows you to invite people to collaborate on the same canvas and sketch new ideas in real-time. Everybody gets access to the same board and can create

One of its best features is you can mention another member and make comments about what others are sketching.

10. Zoom

Lately, Zoom has become one of the most popular meeting platforms, but its features don’t stop there.

This tool has been constantly updated to adapt to different customers’ needs, including professionals who are starting virtual events and webinars, or virtual classrooms.

Music to Listen to While Working

Besides all the organizing tools you can use to focus better, soundproofing, or listening to adequate music or sounds while you work, you can improve your performance.

11. Spotify

We know this is not a discovery for you; however, let us surprise you with a few tips on how to use Spotify to be more productive.

  • Look for a playlist that includes the words focus, work from home, or concentration.
  • Create your own playlist with tracks that don’t distract you and make you feel comfortable.
  • Avoid lyrics and loud vocals, instead, choose instrumental music such as jazz or classical.

And You’re Good to Go!

Being a freelancer is both an exciting and challenging adventure. Technology has evolved so quickly that there are now tons of tools to make it easier for us to work from home, take freelancing projects, and manage to hustle among different jobs. Let us know if you have any other tool that works for you during your freelancing hours!