As a freelancer, you usually don’t have a strict schedule that you have to follow, which can make it a bit hard for some people to be completely efficient with their work. Being able to make a good schedule and having regular clients are important factors in being efficient with your freelance work. When you’re doing your work, you have to be completely focused on it, without allowing any distractions to waste your time. But that is, sometimes, easier said than done. Using a task timer can help you stay on track and manage your time more effectively.
There are a lot of tools online focused on making freelancer work more efficient, or those that are just so good that they indirectly improve efficiency. Today we’ll be talking about 5 of those:
Upwork
The most important thing about being a freelancer is being able to find work. A good job-sourcing app is a great help for finding work. Upwork is one of the most popular freelancing platforms available. Here you can find people searching for any skill that you can offer, with thousands of new requests daily. It’s completely free to register, but keep in mind that Upwork does take a small percentage of your money earned. It’s still worth it because it allows you to start building your freelance career and network.
Todoist
Another essential part of freelancing is being able to keep up with all of the work you have to do. It can happen that someone just loses track of all of the work that has to be done. That’s where a good time management app comes in, Todoist is one of the best for that. Todoist helps you organize and plan all of your work, alone or with collaborators. With the free version, you can create up to 5 different projects at once and make to-do lists for them. The paid version offers you a lot more features that can really come in handy, for only $4/month.
Timely
For a lot of projects, you’ll have to track the time that you spent on them. But even if it’s not required, you may still want to know how exactly you spend your time working and where you can improve your productivity. Timely can help you do just that. It automatically keeps track of the time you spend on different activities, and you can drag and drop to various projects at the end of the day. You don’t have to worry about if you started the tracker, because Timely starts it automatically. Timely starts at $8/month per user.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a grammar and spell checker available on both your phone and PC. Even if your work isn’t writing-related, good grammar and spelling make you look more professional when communicating with clients. With Grammarly being free with its most basic features, it’s well worth getting it. It will help you save time while communicating with clients and promoting yourself online.
Squarespace
An underrated part of being a freelancer is promoting your work and showing it to the world. A good portfolio can go a long way in helping you build a network for your freelancing work. With something like Squarespace, you can easily make a great portfolio website without having to learn any complicated coding or designing skills. It may not directly improve efficiency, but it can help you get more clients and more high-quality work offers.
Final words
Being more efficient means doing more work in less time, which obviously is beneficial for everybody. Freelancers usually don’t have a tight schedule that they have to follow, so they can more easily lose track of time and get distracted. Using the right tools can help you prevent that and enable you to be as efficient as possible.