What's your preferred solo Project Management method?
Hi all — I've always struggled to find a solution that works for running solo projects. I love having a consistent feed of work to keep myself focused, but I've jumped around using anything from sticky-notes on my bedroom wall to Asana. What has been your preferred way to manage your own projects? Or do you not even instill any PM? Why do you prefer the method you use?
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Notion works great for me.
Yeah, pretty much my whole live is managed in notion at the moment 😅
I second that, notion all the way
For anyone interested, I found this good guide to setting up Notion for productivity: https://www.nateliason.com/blog/notion-goals-productivity. I've altered the templates a little but it's working well for me.
Just setup an account, and wow. Seriously — I love it. I've never been a huge fan of Wunderlist/Evernote just because they didn't seem super intuitive, but I freaking love Notion so far for it's easy-to-use nature, and how customizable it is. Appreciate you sharing!
No problem :) It's really a great mix of everything. I basically got my 1st year for free through referring people to the platform.
Still sticky note Guy
I prefer the OmniFocus app for self-management.
Trello and Asana are cool too, but they work better for team projects.
I use the Getting Things Done methodology to become more productive and I'm fully satisfied with it.
"The technique includes 3 steps
1. Inbox (the technique of empty head)
Never keep all tasks in your mind. Use your smartphone to write down all new plans and ideas. This rule is also connected with the famous Zeigarnik effect. Psychological experiments show that people are more likely to remember uncompleted processes than completed ones. So, if you just stop working at 5 p.m., you may all evening worry about things you had to do. It's better to finish at least some little tasks and then have a rest.
2. Weekly review
If you just put everything into the inbox, one day you will find it confusing and messy. So, once a week you should make time for review. I usually divide all tasks to separate projects, check the completed and the planned ones. Some of them can be paused, others can be transformed. The review guarantees your trust in the system because you are sure that you will see all the tasks, not forget them.
3. Define the next steps
Everyday hustle spits your focus and you start to react without thinking and analyzing a situation. To avoid impulsive decisions and time-wasting, it's better to plan your actions in advance. At weekends, when you feel safe and peaceful, sit and think about the further tasks. You can spend an hour, two or three, as much time, as you need for long perspective planning. Then, write specific steps for each task. It's the simplest way to move your goals forward. The steps should be SMART:
I was inspired by this article
https://freshcodeit.com/freshcode-post/time-management-for-business-effective-hacks
Hope you will find something useful there
This is awesome — thanks for sharing. I'm all about having things more structured, so I definitely want to try using this. Love it!
Good luck!
I use ClickUp to run a kanban board. I like the customization of my workflow and it comes with a solid mobile app. Notion for anything else
Todoist and Trello
Tools like Asana are quite overwhelming for me as a freelancer. Currently i am constantly between the simplicity of a moleskin and a google sheet using it as a web app.
@ChrisChiotis how many projects do you pick up in a month and how frequently do you share updates with the clients?
I have been trying to build a solution, that will not only allow freelancers to setup their own one stop selling point for services & products but also to be able to manage their tasks, deliverables and collaborate with clients. Set milestones, deliver orders, and receive payments.
I apologise for forgetting to reply... It has been a year since this comment. Since then I focused on less but bigger clients, so there are months without a new project. However these projects tend to become a little more complicated and require better tracking, so I am investigating into Trello as an easy way to automate some tasks and keep history of comments and actions
Would absolutely agree to that — I feel like it's always been way too much effort to stay on top of it. In my day job, I fully-appreciate our PMs or DLs, but I don't want to spend that much time with something of this size
I apologise for forgetting to reply... It has been a year since this comment, and since then my only true "upgrade" from physical notebooks is Google Calendar+Google Tasks to better handle reminders.
Thanks for the great suggestions all. I'll check them out.
I've been using OneNote since a general purpose note-taking organizational tool seemed ideal for my needs. I agree most project management tools are built for teams and over complex and overkill for solo work.
Recently I started using Microsoft To-Do (Microsoft purchased Wunderlist and rebranded it) which is a good addition to OneNote though both are far from perfect. They need more sorting and filtering options as well as hashtags. I'm hoping they'll add integration between the two apps which work well on desktop and mobile. Since I use Microsoft Windows and Visual Studio for coding, I decided to stick with their product line. Plus they are all free which is always appreciated.
+1 for Clickup. They also have pre-built templates you can use to get going quickly. Love the filter feature, making it easy to focus on what's most important for the day/week.
I use a mix but it ultimately comes down to a markdown file. This has since transitioned to Notion a bit more.
Trello - My "idea" bin
Notion - Active idea scoping/brainstorming/specs
Markdown - Everything else
I keep going back to plain Text files sync'd with dropbox for anything that doesn't need collaboration/sharing with other people. It's simple, works everywhere, and there's no restrictions on how you structure your content.
Obviously this doesn't give you buttons/reminders/stats...etc. But I find it more than enough for anything I work on myself. Key for me is simplicity + search, and text files are great for that.
FYI I use a combination of Sublime Text, nvALT, Writer app, iA Writer, Visual Studio Code, ResophNotes (on Windows machines)
Solo IT consultant here - Asana works well for me as task management, which is all I really do with it.
I use Things (https://culturedcode.com/things/), and I use it not only for kind-of project management but also for hundreds of other things.
It's not free, but I think it's worth it if you use Mac and/or iPhone.
Looks pretty slick — I'm a big fan of having a native app for desktop as well, just because you can consistently have it open on your dock/taskbar, and that can help keep you accountable. Thanks for sharing!
We are a team of two and as we use Airtable for others things as well we just moved all of our project management there as well. For us the advantage is being that we didn’t need to learn one more system just to manage the project and we can customize Airtable to fit our needs perfectly. Previously we used ClickUp.
Can you describe how you've set yourselves up in Airtable for this purpose? Would be interested to know more.
What made you move away from ClickUp?
We wanted to customize the process the way we wanted and Airtable allowed us to do exactly that. Also we use Airtable for other things as well so having only one tool instead of two was a clear choice.
A mix of Todoist and Trello.
I used to use Wunderlist but have recently switched to Trello. I tried Asana and a few others but for solo projects there is too many features that get in the way
Great way to describe it — I see a ton of potential with Asana for small-mid teams (maybe with a dedicated PM), but for solo work you're absolutely right.
I'm using Asana at the moment! It's awesome . I feel that the workflow is super productive
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