Starting a small business is a daunting task. There is so much to do, and so much to think about. It’s overwhelming. The place to start is organization. These are five tools that I use daily to help keep me organized, focused, and on track with everything.
MILEIQ
MIle IQ is a mileage tracking app. You enter your vehicle information, and it tracks your drives. Then you classify them as personal or business. As a creative business owner, I’m always going to meetings, networking events, and conferences. These miles translate to deductions every year for taxes, and MileIQ keeps track of not only the miles, but how much those miles are worth. Drive, classify your drives, and the app does the rest. At the end of the month or end of the year, you can receive a mileage summary that helps you when it comes to taxes!
Pro: makes mile tracking easy. If I didn’t have this app, I probably wouldn’t track my miles.
Con: To make it truly functional for tax deductible miles, you have to pay. Otherwise, you only get 40 free drives a month.
TRELLO
Trello is a lifesaver when it comes to task management. Trello runs on boards, lists, and cards. Each board contains different categories of tasks that you set up. These are called lists. On each list you can add cards, which is where I write my tasks. For example, I have an “Administrative” board for tasks that are not client related. On that board, I have a list for Social Media, Bookkeeping, Blog posts, etc. On each of those I have individual things I need to accomplish, like weekly social media tasks, or blog topics I want to write about. It seemed really confusing for me at first and now I can’t get away from it.
Pro: Effective way to organize and track tasks.
Con: Having “teams” costs money. Can be a little confusing to learn.
HOOTSUITE
Because it’s a pain in the butt to go through every social media platform and post through out the day, social media management platforms were invented. My platform of choice is Hootsuite. I don’t totally love it, but it works for what I do, and any time I’ve had an issue, there has been someone there to help. Hootsuite lets me schedule posts out for the whole week, and lets me respond to followers on each platform. I will say that it’s not great for Instagram I don’t think, but for Facebook and Twitter, it’s awesome.
Pro: Does the job, people are helpful and accessible through Twitter, social media with less distracting content.
Con: a little bit lacking in features and functionality, sometimes glitchy
TOGGL
When you work for yourself, you don’t have anywhere to “clock in” and sometimes you don’t clock out. This is where Toggl is extremely helpful. When you are billing by the hour, and you’re working on multiple clients a day, being able to classify and track hours is a godsend. It lets you categorize your tasks and projects. If you want to take a break, you just simply clock out. Tracking my hours has never been easier.
Pro: Everything, turns gray when you’re not “clocked in" so you can just look at your dashboard and know if you’re logging your hours, it’s red when you are clocked in or the app isn’t open.
Con: Nothing
TIDE
Do you have trouble focusing? If so, Tide is for you, and it’s not just limited to creative entrepreneurs, or business owners at all. It uses the pomodoro method of focus periods and rest periods. You can set each focus period for how ever long you want, and tell it how many focus periods you want before you get an extended break. I have mine set for 25 minute focus periods with 5 minute breaks every half hour, and then a 15 minute break ever two hours. It has helped my productivity immensely. It’s made working and staying focused so much easier. In addition, it helps me make sure I get up and move around so I’m not just sitting and I give my eyes a break.
Pro: Makes me more conscious of my work habits.
Con: Sometimes becomes a source of distraction.
Freelancing or working for yourself is hard because it requires the discipline to stay on task. All of these apps really zero in on better productivity without sacrificing your sanity. Freelancing gets a reputation for hustling and grinding, all-nighters, tight deadlines, and just generally working. I’m not the person who is going to give their life to their job. These tools have shown me how to manage my time, build a business and make it happen without killing myself in the process.
All of these apps have a free version, although I pay for MileIQ. The free versions do the job just as well, and the paid versions aren’t an expense that every business will want to commit to. Really all of these apps either give me less to think about so that I can focus on the important things (MileIQ) or they work together to keep me on task. I can do all of the work with none of the burnout.