The year 2020 is behind us now; excellent time to plan for 2021. As always, you should strive to improve yourself in 2021. The final goal is still to become ‘the best in your field’, which as you know needs a lot of effort to achieve.
This article examines tools you should seriously consider when working from home in 2021. Luckily for you, new productivity tools and updated versions of existing ones are released regularly. If you are looking for something to better your skills, keep on reading.
For Time Tracking – Timenotes
Time tracking tools have come a long way. Timenotes, for instance, ranks highest constantly for agency time management applications. It features a simple yet functional design that’s perfect for tracking multiple projects to the minute.
The amazing reporting capabilities simplify invoice-making and sharing with clients. If you spend too much time on a particular facet of your work, you can now track and improve it!
For Project Management – Trello
It’s surprising how much-underappreciated project management tools are in a disruptive world. Trello is one of the best. The app takes visual representation to the next level, using boards, lists, and cards seamlessly and productively.
The drag-and-drop feature is perfect for moving cards up, down, or to other lists. By taking a quick glance, you can see everything – where you are at, what you are working on, progress and what’s coming next.
For Finance – Quickbooks
Unless you do it for a living, doing your taxes is never fun. The process of separating taxes from deductibles is sure to leave you with a killer migraine. That’s why QuickBooks Self-Employed is an essential tool for modern-day freelancers.
This app gathers data from your financial accounts to help you separate and track your personal and professional spending. That way, when tax season comes, you can easily and seamlessly meet your obligations without hurdles. QuickBooks is also excellent for analytics, allowing you to track things that cost more and provide the least benefits.
For Graphic Design – Canva
If the line of work you are in require good graphics, then Canva should be your new best friend for 2021 and beyond. This tool is quite amazing.
Canva leverages drag-and-drop to make it easy for anyone to make moving graphics regardless of their background. It’s especially useful for non-designers, so be sure to bookmark this productivity tool.
For Password Management – 1Password
Are you still using your childhood nickname for a password? How long will you use the same password for all your accounts? Remembering passwords can be is a tedious. Luckily, 1Password is a password management tool that does the tedious work for you.The app remembers all your passwords across all sites and even suggests secure passwords to avoid using the obvious. As a freelancer, you probably have a ton of passwords to manage. With 1Password, you can say goodbye to forgetting your login details.
For Expert Writing – Hemingway App
Even with multiple degrees, you can’t always maintain your A-game in everything you do. When you want to crank out killer blog posts or simple yet trendy tweets, you need the best. Hemingway App puts an expert editing and writing assistant at your fingertips.
The app will point you to common mistakes automatically so you can avoid common grammatical errors. The tool also identifies complex sentences so you can correct and make your writing short, precise, and to the point. It is effective and mistake-free, enabling you to keep up a professional persona.
For Saving Important Articles – Pocket
To be successful, you need to keep up with industry buzz. Bookmarking every page you find interesting can be tedious, and if overlooked might result in important information being missed. With Pocket, you can keep everything organized. Instead of forgetting about the breakthrough research you were reading about last week, you can save it safely in Pocket and read it during your downtime. The app is available in a mobile and desktop version, allowing you to stay in touch with interesting topics seamlessly.
For Contracts – Proposify
As a freelancer you have likely dealt with numerous contracts. Proposify is a tool that streamlines the proposal-making, contracting, and quote creating process. It uses easy to personalize templates that enable you to make amazing proposals for big projects.
This tool is a must-have if you are looking to deliver a wow-effect to your clients. It’s a sure way to get noticed for your style and professional persona. Misunderstandings are typical in freelancing and that’s more than enough reason to keep Proposify close.
For Social Media – Sprout Social
It is often said that we will live in a highly distracted world. As true as this statement gets, you as a freelancer should appreciate tools that limited your exposure to distractions. Sprout Social is a tool that helps you take control of your social media use. It enables you to plan for your social media posts ahead of time, even using analytic reporting to help make the most of each post.
For Email and Everything in Between – Spike
If you are dealing with multiple email addresses at a time, then you need a way to unify them all. Spike combines all inbox and calendar configurations to give you a single platform to manage everything that comes in and goes out. The conversational design keeps you from dealing with threads of information to find what is relevant now. It’s an excellent tool to easily keep clients up to date.
Bottom-line
Make 2021 a better year for your freelancing career by using some or all of the tools listed above.
