Article Productivity tools we love

Productivity is a hot topic in freelance circles, and there’s no denying that boosting your professional productivity is always going to be a good thing.

Because the more productive the hours we spend working are, the more money we’ll (probably) make! And if we can get more done, more efficiently, we might even find we have to work fewer hours as a result. Meaning we can actually get some rest, which is probably the very best thing we can do for our productivity levels.

It’s definitely possible to overcomplicate things with too many tools. They’re all designed to make your life easier, but if you try and use too many of them, you won’t feel the benefits.

If you choose your tools well, though, you could revolutionise the way you work, concentrating far better and getting things done faster. Sound good?

Now, productivity has (and is) being monetised in a big way, with so many companies targeting the likes of us freelance translators with their apps and platforms. But the question is, with so many tools on offer in this day and age, how on earth do you decide which one’s best for you?

Incorporating a new tool into your workflow and learning how to use it effectively can be time-consuming, so how do you know whether all the effort you’re putting in will pay off?

Well, we ourselves and our wonderful community of freelance translators have put a lot of the most popular productivity tools to the test in recent years, and we’re here to share our favourites.

This isn’t, of course, an exhaustive list, as we’d be here all day. But it should cover all the main bases, and might introduce you to a few things you haven’t come across before. By the end of it, we’re hoping you’ll have an inkling about which tools might be the perfect fit for your business.

Tools for organisation

There are SO MANY apps and tools for keeping our ducks in a row available these days, but here’s a quick run-down of three of the most popular ones out there, all of which are slightly different to each other.

Notion

Heard of this one? We thought so! Notion is a pretty big deal these days. It’s a very versatile tool that can be used for all kinds of things, even content writing, but one of its main strengths is project management.

Notion can get very complicated and has a vast array of features to discover, but keeping it simple is probably your best bet as a freelance translator.

As with a lot of these tools, it’ll take you a while to get to grips with it at the beginning, but once you do, it could really transform your whole approach to work.

Like a lot of these tools these days, it has built-in AI features (paid, not on the free version), which could help simplify the way you work if you use ChatGPT or something similar as part of your creative process.

Asana

Asana is another tool along the same lines as Notion, and is great both for tracking progress as an individual and for communicating with your team (should you have one) about tasks and projects.

If you’re working towards certain goals with your business, a tool like Asana could help you break those goals down into manageable chunks and make good progress.

It integrates with widely-used apps like Google Workspace, so you can easily attach files and keep everything nicely organised.

Sunsama

We really like Sunsama’s approach to things, because it’s an app that’s all about getting things done in a calm, focused way, keeping track of everything you’ve got on without getting overwhelmed by it.

Whereas a lot of these productivity apps feel a bit frenetic, using Sunsama can help you feel like you’re on track and making good progress without the stress.

We love the way you can integrate it with your Google Calendar, your emails and even Notion and Asana. It helps you plan your time, set realistic goals and stick to them.

If your brain feels a bit overloaded and you struggle to plan your days and use your time intentionally then Sunsama’s approach could be right for you. The only thing to bear in mind is that there’s no free option. There’s a two-week free trial available, but then there’s a monthly fee to pay, which, understandably, might put a lot of freelance translators off.

Tools for time management

Toggl Track

Toggl Track has been one of the leading time tracking tools out there for an awful long time now, and has plenty of die-hard fans.

You can manually track what you’re getting up to by clicking a button, or if you find you struggle to remember to turn your time tracker on and off, then you can let it run in the background and log where you spend your time automatically.

It can also integrate with tools like Asana, Google Calendar and more.

It’s used by big businesses but is just as useful for helping freelancers see where they’re spending their time and use that data to make informed decisions.

Clockify

Clockify is another popular time tracking tool that’s well-loved by freelancers and small businesses alike. It allows you to easily log your hours, set up projects, and generate reports to see where your time is going. Like Toggl, the platform offers a free tier with functionality that might just fit the bill for you. Plus, with options to track time manually or automatically, you can choose the method that suits you best.

Calendly

Save yourself all that back and forth trying to find a meeting time that works for you and whoever you need to speak to and just let them book a slot in your calendar. The free version of Calendly covers the majority of bases, but the paid version, of course, unlocks many more fancy features.

Another great alternative to this, though, is Google’s appointment scheduling feature, which also has a free version which will probably be more than adequate for any freelancer. If you already use Google Calendar to organise your time, then this might be the most sensible option for you!

Tools for focusing

You’ve probably heard of the Pomodoro technique. If you haven’t, it involves working on a particular task with no distractions for 25 minutes, and then intentionally taking a 5-minute break to do other things like stretching, going to the loo, getting some water, or what have you.

It’s a great way of stopping yourself from being tempted to “just check your email/LinkedIn quickly” or “just hang out the washing”, when you should be focusing.

Our brains like to bounce around the place and don’t want to concentrate on one thing, but obliging them to actually stick to something for just 25 minutes can help us get so much more done.

There are plenty of apps out there that will keep you on track with your Pomodoros, but if you want to take it the extra mile then Flow could be perfect for you, as it has more handy little features to keep you focused (plenty of which are free).

There are also some project management apps which have Pomodoro timers built into them, like KanbanFlow, another good option for planning your time and keeping on top of tasks with simple to-do lists.

Tools for speeding things up

As we’ve mentioned, a lot of apps designed to boost productivity or help with project management now integrate AI features, so you don’t have to go into a different tool at all if you, say, want to do some research into a specific term or bounce some ideas around for a tricky transcreation.

But a lot of these features are paid, so you might still want to stick to free tools like ChatGPT or Bing Copilot to help speed up your work or take care of certain manual or repetitive tasks.

We’ve written a blog about some ways you might want to use AI as a translator, including a section about the ethics of doing so, but really, it’s up to you to be imaginative about how AI might be able to make you more productive.

Tools for communication

Email doesn’t always cut the mustard, so, as you probably already know, a lot of people use Slack to communicate amongst teams or communities.

Ever found yourself spending far too much time going back through an email thread trying to find an elusive nugget of information? Yep, us too.

If you’re communicating with clients or colleagues and need to share files (it can connect to Google Docs) on the regular, then a communication tool like Slack could be your very best friend.

Tools for a smooth workflow

You probably don’t need us to tell you how useful Google Docs can be when it comes to productivity, as anyone you’re collaborating with on a project can edit the very same document you’ve been working on. We have to be honest, we use Google Docs above Word for pretty much everything these days.

Another tool we find really useful for keeping work flowing smoothly is Loom, a well-known tool which is super easy to use. Sometimes, a meeting isn’t necessary, but an email doesn’t quite cut it, and that’s where Loom comes in.

You could use it, for example, to go through a translation you’ve been working on and explain the issues that came up and the solutions you’ve found, keeping your clients informed and really impressing them with the way you go above and beyond.

Tools for saving things for later

Google Keep is a great free app that can really boost your creative process as you can use it to save thoughts, images and even audio wherever you are, and then see it all on your computer later on.

Because we all know that inspiration often strikes at the most inconvenient moments, when you’re out and about, or when you’re in the middle of something else.

You can also use it for to-do lists and generally unloading all that information you “keep” in your brain.

Another good option for saving things for later is Pocket. It’s great for storing all those websites and articles you don’t have time to check out right now. You can also use it for filing away any pages you want to use for inspiration for a certain project, like the new freelance translation website you’re hoping to create.

A tool designed just for translators

You didn’t really think we weren’t going to mention LSP.expert, now did you?

LSP.expert doesn’t really fit into any of the categories above because it covers a whole bunch of them.

And that’s because it was designed from scratch to meet the needs of all you wonderful freelance linguists, no matter how many languages you work in, currencies you use or services you provide.

If you’re not familiar with LSP.expert, then it’s a project management platform that makes it wonderfully straightforward to manage jobs, send quotes and invoices to your clients, keep track of all those little details about each client’s specific payment terms, outsource jobs, log expenses, track your time for each job, discover your performance and profitability, and more.

Whether you’re a freelancer or an LSP agency, it’s designed with all the quirks of the translation industry in mind and will boost your productivity no end. For one thing, you won’t need to spend hours creating invoices for each of your clients at the end of each month anymore.

If you’re not convinced, then let us prove it to you with our 30-day free trial.