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As a freelancer working on both paid and personal projects, I'm always splitting my time between a huge number of small and large projects/tasks/fine details. I've developed a small custom-coded solution to organizing my time and tasks.

What is the best solution to organizing and managing your projects, tasks and to-do list as a freelancer? This could include both paid and unpaid services, programs, or other web-based solutions.

I know it can be subjective to say 'the best', so I'll rephrase the question to 'what do you find to be the most effective solution for yourself, and why?'

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if it is not strictly a coding question maybe programmers.stackexchange.com is better place for this question –  rene Mar 1 '11 at 20:09
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3 Answers

I think this was asked here -- What is your _single_ favorite GTD tool?

That's for tracking to-do lists.

But as a freelancer, you also want a financial analysis tool to track expenses, mileage, etc. I use a financial product that's commercially available for this as it also allows me to port that information into my tax forms.

But the GTD tools are good for tracking to-do items; use a financial software package for tracking expenses (and even your time spent on projects).

Hope this helps.

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I like to use Google Apps (google.com/apps) because of the tools it uses to manage all Google tools, also you can go to the "Apps Marketplace" to 'install' free Project and Time management tools.

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At a really basic level, write down what you need to do.

Really, take a piece of paper, and focusing on one project, write down the things that need to be done for that project. Then take another piece of paper, focus on another project, and bang out another to-do list. Once you have your project tasks on paper, combine them on a "master" page, putting them in whichever order you prefer - priority, importance, etc. This works well for combining tasks from multiple directions into a single view.

Keeping track of what needs to be done is a very important skill. I find doing the above to be quite helpful when I'm not sure what I should be doing.

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