I have a love/hate relationship with the number of SaaS platforms out there to help me do what I do. I love that they make my job easier and help me get better results for clients. But I hate that there are SO many of them.
I enjoy learning new tools (and learning in general). I like diving into a new tool and figuring out the best way to use it. But I can’t spend my whole day playing around and learning. I have to DO.
My approach is to have my handful of go-to tools and evaluate new ones here and there. I have a working knowledge of which tools are best at what, and I try to stay disciplined and avoid testing new tools every day.
Here’s my current stack for myself and clients.
Shift
I’m really bad at staying focused on my work. Like…REALLY bad. I have a bad habit of popping into my email to see what’s up. And I love dropping everything to check Slack.
I’m pretty sure this issue isn’t unique to me.
I’ve spent years trying different ways to help myself gain focus. The most effective has been—and I know this feels obvious—to close my email and Slack. That always works for a while (as in a few days), but then I inevitably find my email back open all day.
Shift is a desktop app that, for me, keeps all my distractions—namely email and Slack—in one nice, neat place. The tool is built to keep all your work together, but for me, it lets me separate my work from the things that distract me from work.
I have all my inboxes, Slack channels, and Skype in Shift. I have notifications turned off. When I start on a task, I close Shift and all my distractions go away with it.
Todoist
Todoist is exactly what it sounds like: A digital checklist. I’m driven by checklists, and Todoist lets me manage checklists like a fiend. I keep a daily checklist and random things to remember. I complete each item every day. Every once in a while I have to reschedule something, but I work hard not to.
When I start a new habit, I still use paper to get started, then move to Todoist to maintain. It’s a little TOO easy to reschedule and postpone tasks in Todoist, so I find paper > digital works best for making it stick.
Here’s an overview of some of my daily checklist items:
- Exercise
- Log my food
- Read
- Write
- Practice Spanish
- Reach out to a friend or family member
- Stretch
- Meditate
- Plan the next day each night
Focusmate
Focusmate is a virtual co-working tool that lets you “work together” with another person—from all over the world. I do a Focusmate session each morning to get my day started, and it helps me get a productive start to the day. I use sessions mostly for writing, but people use them for studying, inbox cleaning, even household chores.
I was skeptical about the concept at first—you leave your video on the whole time—but it has been the impetus I need to “start” each morning, which is one of my big ADHD barriers.
They have a free plan where you get up to 3 sessions per week. But the pro plan, which gives you access to unlimited session, is only $5 a month. Totally worth it. I do 1-3 sessions most days and am more productive for it.
And.co (Now Fiverr Workplace)
I’m a business owner, so I have to deal with accounting and bookkeeping activities. Luckily, I have only a handful of transactions per month. Some invoices, payments for those invoices, and pretty predictable expenses. I found And.co when I started my business in 2018, and I haven’t found a better option for running a freelance business. It handles client contracts, invoices, online payments, time tracking, expense management, and more—all in one place.
I track my revenue and expenses, invoice clients, record payments, accept online payments, and more in And.co. When tax time comes, I just export my data and pass that csv file on to my accountant.
Asana
I have a bad habit of setting up a project management system and then switching every few months. I enjoy setting up the processes and workflows, and a new setup always energizes (and distracts) me. But I’ve stayed disciplined for more than a year with an Asana setup I’m pretty happy with.
Most of my clients have their own project management system, and I’m integrated into those. Instead of managing my work in six different places (that didn’t go well, trust me), I now pull all my work into my Asana dashboard. I have my VA go through each week and get my work into Asana and assigned to me with deadlines. She does that on Sunday/Monday, so I have my work all lined up each week.
I also keep project backlogs in Asana boards for when I have down time (lol what’s that). I have a backlog of blog ideas, things to learn, website updates to make, and more. When I have capacity, I can grab any of those tasks and add it to my week.
I’m currently on the free Asana plan. Most of the paid features are focused on team functionality, and I don’t have a team. The free plan works great and has everything I need to plan my work.
Streak
I don’t need an enterprise CRM to keep track of the handful of potential clients I talk to each year. I’m very lucky to have a core group of long-term clients, and most of my work comes by word of mouth and referral.
I don’t have to be out there tracking down leads and trying to close sales by the end of each month. Which means I don’t need Salesforce-level complexity.
I pretty much just need a spreadsheet. And Streak is basically a spreadsheet that happens to integrate into my Gmail/G Suite. Its paid plan has a lot more functionality, but for me, I just need a name, an email, a record of our conversations, and a reminder to follow up.
I’m not a big social media user, but I am on LinkedIn pretty much every day. I use it to stay in touch with my professional network. I’ve never enjoyed in-person networking events, so LinkedIn is my jam. I can meet new people, have genuine conversations with them, and have way less anxiety around it all.
I also use it to share my thoughts on the industry (and life in general). I’m not on there to sell, but I’ve made connections that have led to new clients, referrals, and partnerships.
Screencast-o-matic
A screen recording can be helpful in so many situations. I use them for giving feedback, training, and so much more. There are plenty of screen recording tools out there, but I use Screencast-o-matic. It’s quick to launch, easy to use, and stores all my videos. It also makes sharing easy, which is important since that’s the main reason I do screen recordings…to share with someone.
I’m on the free plan and haven’t run into any blockers or issues at all. The paid plans are crazy affordable (~$20/year…yup, per year, not per month), and I’d upgrade in a second if I ever needed more advanced features.
Drive and Dropbox
I work on several different computers, depending on what I’m doing and where I’m working. So I need all my files accessible across devices. Dropbox serves as my main file storage system. I keep my files and my client files in an obnoxiously organized hierarchy within Dropbox. The desktop app integrates right into Windows finder, so finding and organizing files is fast and easy.
While Dropbox allows file sharing, I use Google Drive when I need to share and collaborate on files. In Drive, I can work with clients on a piece of copy without having to send a file back and forth. Many of my clients work with me on pieces via Drive comments and suggestions, and they can just make the changes if they want—and we always have the same latest version of the file. Plus version history. I can’t add up the amount of time wasted on sending V1, V1.1, V2.3, FINAL, FINAL2, FINAL_REALLY files back and forth. Not to mention having to sync up on which version is latest, which is hard when the last round of revisions included one comma change. Drive helps alleviate all of that.
Calendly
I find the “when can you meet” back-and-forth email chain an inefficient way to schedule meetings, especially when they’re one-on-one meetings like most of mine.
Calendly lets other people book a time on my calendar for a time that works for both of us. The person booking chooses a time from the available options on my Calendly page. And my Calendly page only shows meeting times when I’m available (and willing) to meet. Once someone books a meeting, an invite is added to my calendar and theirs. Plus, they can cancel or reschedule right from the invite if needed.
I have my Calendly set to require 24 hours notice on meetings, each meeting is 30 minutes by default (I can change it after if warranted), a Zoom link is sent out for each meeting, and Calendly is synced with my calendar, so I’m automatically marked busy when I have time slots blocked off for the gym, other meetings, or lunch.
When I first started using Calendly, I thought it was cold and impersonal. Now I see it’s efficient and convenient.
SyncThemCalendars
Speaking of calendars…For Calendly to be useful to me, I need all my calendars to sync into one. I accomplish this with a tool called SyncThemCalendar. It does one thing: syncs calendars. I have all my Gmail calendars sync into one, which I then tie into Calendly.
Wrapping it Up
This is a pretty long list of tools. And it only covers the ones I use consistently. It can be overwhelming, and I’m so thankful that I can learn new tools quickly—and actually enjoy it.
My advice, if you’re overwhelmed by tools, is to pick your core stack and stick with it. Know your go-tools for different tasks, projects, and purposes. Learn and evaluate new ones as you run across them, but stick with what works.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the past suffering from what I call “ooo, shiny syndrome.” I would get distracted by shiny new tools and immediately hop in and try them out. OK, I still do that sometimes, but I try to be more disciplined about it. Now, when I learn about a new tool, I add a Chrome bookmark and maybe eventually get around to looking at it. I still learn new tools consistently and integrate them into my and my clients’ workflows, but I’m wasting much less time on it now.
What are your favorite go-to tools? How do you handle the onslaught of tools flying at your face each month?
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