Ask HN: What tools do you use to manage your freelance projects?
I've used several tools over the years but no one fits my needs well enough. I wonder if I miss some magic tool. Which tool work best for a single person operation?
I've used several tools over the years but no one fits my needs well enough. I wonder if I miss some magic tool. Which tool work best for a single person operation?
I wrote a tool based on my own custom markdown format / file structure. The file is always called `project.md` and part of the project as well as my personal invoice generator git repository, which is basically a parser + pdf generator.
The md file contains customer information, todos and time tracking. Based on this format I can generate an invoice with a detailed table of every task including the time required. And it even looks pretty good in the markdown view.
It can be edited in any IDE / text editor and even in the online editor of the git management.
Works pretty well so far. An example:
How do you handle deadlines and setbacks?
Todoist, Obsidian and Eagle form the second brain. Write to forget things, not remember them. Only plan daily if you can. Github issues + projects, even without a team helps to track progress and prioritise tasks. Mix Clockify in there as a time tracker and invoice generator for short and long term tasks
I use a browser extension that's been a game-changer for my focus. It blocks distracting sites during work sessions and tracks my time. Really helps me stay on task as a solo freelancer. It's called Deep Work Zone: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/deep-work-zone/fkng...
Definitely clockify for time tracking
Git for source code control. A notepad and pencil for listing out the TODOs. I write "Done" next to a bullet point when it's done. I might rewrite the list occasionally without the done items for clarity or write numbers next to the bullet points to prioritise them. I think if you can't write out a task description as a short sentence then it's either not well understood enough or too broad in scope to accomplish easily. In the latter case it needs breaking out into a set of smaller tasks.
I don't use any framework for unit tests. Only a short program for each test that returns 0 on success or some other number for failure and prints a message to stderr about what the problem is. These get run in a loop from a shell script.
The same as you, but for TODOs, I have a simple macro on my neovim setup because then I can keep the todos with my version control(it is a single text file, newline separated) and see what changed and why I added something. Really helpful if I come back to something after some time.
I do something similar. Simple highlights on to-do items helps a lot.
And using bullet journal style to-do markers help organization.
- [ ] todo
- [x] done
- [-] failed
- [v] dropped
- [>] migrated
- [^] scheduled
- [<] delegated
Easy to set up vim highlighting on those patterns.
I have some examples here:
https://jodavaho.io/posts/bullet-journalling.html
And a bash setup here
https://github.com/jodavaho/bashlog
I wasn't aware what I've been doing is named bullet journaling by some, but thanks for this info.
I typically write my own.
The free tiers of https://linear.app/ and https://www.notion.so/ are pretty good.
Combined with plugging your linear account into the VCS of your choice (probably github/gitlab/bitbucket).
The free tier of https://www.figma.com/ is good for mockups and design.
The only tool I truly find magically despite how boring it sounds is chatGPT, I can tell it everything as a living dev log, I tell it time date when I do things and why and so on just documentating my progress, listing todos and reminders as I go but now I can "talk" back forth on the administrative things like reminding me where I was, recap here, it's just great for managing boring things like I never been able to do before
Does ChatGPT have storage options now? Seems like you would need that unless you paste the output into a doc and reupload it.
I built Tatask.com for this! I want to have easy visibility over everything but quickly drill down into specifics so it uses a tree structure for tasks.
You can break down any project into smaller and smaller sections to whatever degree you like and it makes it super easy to visualise everything and make progress.
- clockify for time tracking - Google keep for notes - Trello for my personal work management - DocuSign to sign contracts - eProcessify for generating and sending invoices
I don't use any tools. Just plain text editor for notes
What are your needs?
Trello is good for the kanban side of things.
Trello was the first tool I used. Drag & drop and the whole UI was fun but it's hard to see the big picture.
Trello is good for small teams that aren't co-located.
Yeah make is nice for managing simple build steps.