Productivity Tools and Tips that Helped Me as a Freelance Web Developer

In summary, the most important things for productivity are tools, the environment, and good practices.

With the right tools, the right environment, and good practices, a person can become very productive.

After a good amount of years as a freelancer working on my own, and learning from others, I have discovered a combination of things that make me very productive and I want to share them with you.

Not everything might apply to you but you can try certain things and see how it goes

1. Hardware - Your personal computer. All the work that I do as a freelancer web developer is on my computer.

My first personal computer used for work was an average-priced laptop from Asus with Windows installed.

This was ok for a few years as I started my freelancing career but with time it started to be slow. Especially when I tried it for programming tasks that required more computing power.

After I started to earn a good amount of money I bought a newer Asus laptop(average at that year) and I immediately saw the performance difference. The first laptop was average for the period when I started but after 2-3 years passed it was no longer average for the new period.

Applications run much faster on it and after a few days, I saw a significant increase in the tasks that I was able to do with it.

You can do good work with an average-priced computer but with applications requiring more computing power about every year, you will need to keep up with your hardware.

If you want a computer to be great for more years, for example, 4-5 years you can upgrade it with new parts or buy an above-average device.

If you are using a Windows-based personal computer, I highly recommend you buy a license for it when you can afford it and it will perform better.

This increase in productivity that I saw after buying a new laptop made me think, "What if I can buy an even better laptop? Will that increase my productivity even more?". So I did.

After about 6-7 months later, it was the launch of the new Apple MacBook with the M1 processor. I was looking at YouTube video reviews and all the reviewers were amazed at the performance increase compared to the previous models.

So I decided to buy one and the experience was AMAZING!

It was my first MacBook and my first time using macOS.

I could not believe that a laptop can work so fast. Applications launched instantly and they didn't block 99% of the time!

Even after I installed many more applications things just worked instantly.

The next year was my highest-earning year in my freelancing career.

I was able to just do my work and the computer didn't stand in my way.

2. Organization Tools. With so many things going on in life, it is good to have one or more tools to keep track of tasks.

Our memory is limited and we can't remember all the things in detail that we have to do or plan to do.

To organize my life and work, I first started to use Trello. It was nice that it was free and fast.

It worked well but with time, after the amount of things that I had to do had increased, it was hard to manage stuff there. It took me too much time to manage things.

I switched to this Web Application(self-manager.net) after new features had been added and it worked great for me. It was simple to manage things and it scaled well with what I had to do.

I use this app both for project management on my freelancing projects and for personal tasks.

For me, it works best to have something simple and easy to manage.

There are many such tools available and you should use the one that works best for your situation.

3. The environment. As a freelancer, I have the freedom to choose the location I want to work from.

However, 95% of the time I work from my home because it is comfortable and distraction-free.

For me, to be productive I need a comfortable work position and no distractions so I can do my work uninterrupted.

A complex task requires me to spend a good amount of hours thinking about it without having distractions to interrupt me. This way I can put a few hours into a complex task and fully focus on it which makes things go fast and efficiently.

You don't want every 10 minutes to be distracted by something and take your thinking in many directions.

I also take breaks to refresh and get new ideas.

This combination of comfort, no distractions, and breaks when I want, works very well for me and keeps me productive.

4. Where you spend your time. If you think you’re not spending your time wisely you can track your time for 1 week in a spreadsheet and see the activities you put time into.

At the end of the week, you will see clearly the time you used for various tasks. This will also give you a realistic view of what amount of tasks you can work on during the week and the benefits of doing them.

I saw this on one of the YouTube videos from Sam Ovens and he has a template for it.

The video is called "Tired Of Wasting Your Time? (Watch This)"

5. Decision fatigue. If your daily activities need mental power, you should be aware of decision fatigue.

The basic explanation of it is that we have a limit of decisions that we can take during one day.

Our mental capacity is limited and you should prioritize tasks that bring the best outcomes and deprioritize the other ones.

If you have many meaningless tasks during the day they will take the space from your decision capacity and you will get tired and have less capacity for the most important tasks.

There are people who encourage the way that a day should start with the most important tasks first and then take care of less important tasks.

In my experience, it did not work well for me because I don't like my day to start hard. I like the the opposite. I want to wake up and have easy tasks in the first part of the day and during the middle of the day take care of harder tasks that need my full attention.

You can experiment with what part of the day you want to take care of the most complex tasks and see what works best for you

6. Don't be too hard on yourself. Life is not just about work and you should include some fun activities during the work if you can or after it.

Make sure you get enough hours of sleep for your case and avoid stressful working conditions.

To work at full capacity you will need to be rested and feel excited about the work that you're doing.

If I have lighter tasks on which I work I also listen to some interesting audiobooks or podcasts and even put some music in the background.

You should also make time for social interactions with friends and family.