Tag: Trello

Working Remotely Worked For Me

I always wanted to be the kind of dad who was around for his kids during the day. I always thought, if it worked out, it would be great to work remotely. For me, one of the hardest things about having a full time job away from home was a feeling of missing out, of not being around, especially in those early years when my kids were toddling around. I’d see my kids briefly in the morning and then for a couple of hours through dinner and bedtime, full of reading, stories, and song. I valued the time I did have with them, but I always wanted more. Then, around the time my son was entering kindergarten, we moved to a different city and I took the opportunity to turn my permanent full time position into a work-from-home gig. This turned out to be fortunate, because my son’s undiagnosed autism led to a difficult transition to kindergarten. As hard as it was, I was able to be there for him and support him at school. I used to joke that I was my family’s chauffeur, given how much I drove everyone around.

The predictability of my work-from-home job gave me a solid platform from which to support my wife and children in the way that they most needed at the time. In the morning, I walked my son to school. In the afternoon, I stopped by after school to help him transition to after care. I worked in the in-between times. Because I worked with a team of writers that was also working remotely, this worked pretty well. I didn’t feel like I was the only one calling in to the office.

My colleagues and I experimented with several different tools to manage workflow (Trello and Asana stand out in my mind), but in the end we settled on a Google Sheet to track the work that needed to be written. I found the flexibility of my work to be quite freeing. I didn’t need to clock in for set hours, because it was more important that the work was done. Even though my work sometimes bled into evenings and weekends, I felt like I achieved a solid balance between work and family obligations. Not only that, it allowed my wife much greater flexibility in her job seeking process.

Unfortunately, about a year later my entire team was laid off following an acquisition. With a strong feeling that my son needed me to be around for him, I decided to pursue freelance work so that I could continue working from home. Little did I anticipate how stressful the hustle for work would be, nor how often freelance work would take me outside the home. But that’s a tale for another time.

My job situation is different now. My children are also older and don’t need my attention quite so fiercely. As stressful as it was at times, I’m grateful that I was able to be there, working from home, during some of their earliest years.

No matter what happens, I’ll always be there to read to them at bedtime.

Tech Tools for Freelancers

Full disclosure: I’m new to the freelance game. Entering the freelance world after a career of safe, cushy corporate positions is a bit like a baby bird being pushed out of the nest, but it’s worth the risk to have more direct control over my career. Thankfully, I’m smart enough to know I can’t do it on my own. Whether you’re a newbie (like me) or a grizzled freelancing veteran, there are loads of innovative tech tools for freelancers that can help you run your  business like a Fortune 500 company.

Time Tracking Tools

Harvest – limited free option or $12 per month. This flexible, functional time tracking app is compatible with popular accounting programs (Quickbooks, Xero), project management apps (Basecamp), and CRM tools (Salesforce).

Paymo – limited free option or $9.95 per month. Inexpensive option for the sole proprietor offers a goal calendar, client portal and a desktop monitor that will show you how you’ve been spending (or wasting) your time.

Toggl – limited free option or $5 per month. A simple, inexpensive solution offering desktop monitoring, plus a handy Google Chrome extension and a workspaces option for simple, effective project management.

Freckle – $19.95/month. Simplified manual tracking with a clever hashtag feature, professional, Paypal-friendly invoicing and the cool Pulse feature that gives you a calendar view of your productivity.

RescueTime – limited free option or $9/month. Not an invoicing program, but a very robust time tracking/productivity tool. Helps you set goals, block time wasters and rates your activities on a productivity scale from “very distracting” to “very productive,” to produce an overall productivity score.

Social Media Management Tools

Hootsuite – limited free option or $14.99+ per month. Somewhat of an industry standard, it’s robust offerings include management for multiple accounts, team collaboration, scheduled updates and customized analytics. Can get expensive as you start adding team members and/or requesting additional reports.

Buffer – $10 per month. The perfect tool if you need posting and scheduling help across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.

SocialOomph – limited free option or $39.99 per month. Compatible with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. blogs and more. Features include post scheduling, analytics and dashboard functionality.

Sprout Social – free limited trial then $39-$99 per month. A Hootsuite competitor, Sprout Social lets you manage, monitor, post and analyze multiple social media accounts from one location.

TweetDeck – free. This tool will help you manage, track and organize multiple accounts, as long as they are all Twitter accounts.

Project Management Tools

Basecamp – $20 per month. Widely used cloud-based project management solution.

Freedcamp – free. Essentially a free version of Basecamp, and a functional, robust project management option for freelancers on a budget.

Trello – free to $50 per month. An elegant, visually driven project collaboration tool.

Asana – free. A great, affordable option for smaller freelance operations, free for up to 15 users.