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Freelance Goal Setting: How to Create Reasonable and Achievable Goals
As a freelancer, there’s no one standing over your shoulder, telling you what to work on next. No one measures your progress or checks off your milestones. And there’s no one making sure your career is on the right path. All of that falls on you.
If you want to be successful, it’s essential to set effective goals. Goals are the beginning of your plans, barometers of your success, and the launching-off points for your work. They offer several significant benefits that freelancers can’t ignore:
- Goals give you focus and direction by creating targets for which you’ll aim.
- Goals help you see how far you’ve come.
- Goals help you gain skills and improve yourself.
- Goals ensure you deliver quality work to your clients to ensure you always meet their needs.
- Achieving your goals makes you feel confident, empowered, and motivated to keep growing as a freelancer.
Marketing guru Seth Godin says it perfectly: “The thing about goals is that living without them is a lot more fun, in the short run. It seems to me, though, that the people who get things done, who lead, who grow and who make an impact … those people have goals.”
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10 Toggl Alternatives: The Best Time Tracking Tools for Freelancers
Freelancing gives you a great deal of independence and control over your career and work habits compared to the restrictions of being an employee. It is something many people have experienced during the pandemic. It’s not surprising that nearly 40% of workers said they would rather quit their job than go back to the office full-time after trying to work remotely for a while.
On the downside, you can only blame yourself when something goes wrong. And let’s be honest – something can go wrong quite easily. With the number of distractions that surround us, it’s very hard not to lose focus from time to time.
In such situations, you can sometimes find yourself in a tight spot – working long hours to keep an important deadline. It is hard to keep track of the amount of time you’ve worked on a project and provide detailed information to your clients – otherwise, they might think that you’re either doing some work for free or billing them too much. One way to handle this is by using time tracking tools such as Toggl or our Timing.
Timing is an automatic premium time tracking solution for macOS users. It helps you track time spent on your projects, create detailed reports you can use to attach to your invoices, and manage your clients successfully. With Timing, you will get more reliable data than manual time trackers. You can use accurate details to bill your working hours correctly and make your projects more profitable.
Also, by helping you understand how you spend your workday, Timing enables you to increase your productivity and efficiency. To see how Timing works, use a 14-day free trial and download our app today.
But if you’re still not sure what to do, read on – we’ll take you through the ten best Toggl alternatives you can currently find on the market!
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ActivTrak vs RescueTime: Which Productivity App is Better for You
When you have no control over your bad work habits, they affect your personal life and career. Browsing the internet, shopping online, and especially using social media during work hours can significantly reduce your productivity.
Statista reports that over 200 million people worldwide are addicted to social media. It can even destroy your otherwise successful career in extreme situations.
Luckily, there is an effective way to keep your professional life in order and win back some of the time you’re wasting every day on various online distractions. Spend it instead with family and friends or doing activities that make you happy!
While developing Timing, our premium time tracking tool for macOS users, we extensively researched other time tracking solutions and productivity apps such as ActivTrak and RescueTime to address most of the issues users are likely to have with these tools.
Our goal was to deliver the best possible solution to help our users cut down on bad habits that affect their productivity and efficiency.
We provide high-performing professionals with detailed time reports to help them understand how they spend their workdays and where they can make improvements. As a result, our users feel more in control and empowered in their personal and professional lives. Sign up today for a 14-day free trial, start tracking your time and see if Timing is a good fit for your needs.
Now, let’s go over the basics on RescueTime and ActivTrak and see why Timing is an excellent alternative to these tools.
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RescueTime vs Freedom – Who Wins?
Productivity is vital in the 21st century, and it’s not a secret that people aren’t as productive as they could be. A Gallup study conducted just a few years ago showed that 53% of employees did only the bare minimum required by their job position.
Also, one clear conclusion from the pandemic’s impact on our lives is that remote work has become more important than ever. In today’s remote working environment, people struggle with distractions that affect their efficiency during the day. That makes it more and more challenging to complete all their work in time to meet their deadlines.
Distractions caused by social media and other web services are one of the leading causes of productivity issues. Luckily, there are ways to curb all this negativity. One easy fix is using time tracking software to ensure your team is working at maximum efficiency.
Timing, RescueTime, and Freedom are some of the popular solutions in this niche. It’s time you found out more about them!
You can start with Timing, our time tracking solution for Mac users, which is enjoyable to use and respects your employees’ privacy while helping you see how they spend their work hours. Activate a free 14-day trial we’re currently offering, and start tracking!
Now, let’s explore RescueTime and Freedom and see how they stack up against each other.
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Is Freelancing Worth It? How to Determine if Freelancing is Viable
Like many professionals, you might be wondering if you can make a living as a freelancer. After all, lots of people are trying it. A FlexJobs survey found that 36% of U.S. workers freelanced during the pandemic. That’s an increase of 2 million since 2019. According to a Fiverr study, 68% of remote workers are interested in freelancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
That isn’t to say that people are only freelancing because of the pandemic. Countless professionals are tired of traditional employment. They want work that’s satisfying, fulfilling, and adaptive to their life goals. It’s no surprise that the freelance/gig economy is more attractive than ever.
For some people, the switch to freelancing is forced. They lose their job (often due to the pandemic) and have to make ends meet by finding new ways to earn income. Others do it by choice. They choose to abandon a life of traditional work in search of something more fulfilling. You’ve probably witnessed friends and family attempt freelancing.
In this article, we help you decide if freelancing is right for you. We’ll cover the benefits and drawbacks of the freelance lifestyle. Then we offer some questions to ask yourself to help you decide if you’re ready to make the switch.
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RescueTime vs TimeCamp vs Timing: Which Time Tracking App is Better for Small Teams
Employee productivity is essential for any successful business, and in the 21st century, there’s a myriad of different distractions that can affect it negatively. The main culprits here are – of course – social media and the Internet. An average American spends around 1300 hours a year on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Long story short – wasting time on various portals when your team is supposed to be working can be a severe problem, and it can be pretty hard to pinpoint and identify by yourself.
From a manager’s perspective, knowing precisely how much time your team members spend on different parts of a project is incredibly valuable, especially in the case of smaller teams, where each person’s contribution matters much more. It’s also crucial to know how their workload affects their work-life balance and if it has a negative impact on their personal lives. Thankfully, there’s a category of software that helps you with all that and more – time tracking tools.
While improving the Timing app, our intelligent automatic time tracking solution, and a premium product for Mac users, we did extensive research to compare our product with other tools on the market. We learned that there are quite a few different solutions out there, but RescueTime, TimeCamp, and our Timing seem to be some of the most interesting right now.
In this blog post, we will cover and compare each of these three tools, similar at first glance but with a different set of features and approaches to pricing. So, if you want to learn how they stack up against each other, our in-depth RescueTime vs TimeCamp vs Timing comparison is an excellent place to start!
In the meantime, if you are new to the time tracking tools, we strongly recommend you sign up for a 14-day free trial and download our Timing app to test all available features. The process is fast and easy, and it takes only a minute to set everything up.
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Time Doctor vs. RescueTime: Which App Will Help You Achieve Your Goals the Most?
For a freelancer, time tracking is crucial for many reasons. Perhaps the most important one is that billing clients for the time you spend on a project is how you make your money. Time tracking tools also help you stay on top of your work and better manage your time.
Even though Time Doctor and RescueTime are some of the most commonly used time tracking software applications these days, there are also alternatives you should consider. Our Timing app is an excellent choice for Mac users looking for an intelligent automatic time tracking solution. It helps you quickly figure out how much time you spend on important projects with less effort, measuring your work activities and distractions simultaneously.
Today, we will compare Time Doctor, RescueTime and Timing to help you decide which one works best for you and your freelancing business. We strongly recommend you start a 14-day free trial and download Timing to try out all the available features if you need a fast start. It will help you save time and money and ensure you don’t leave any working hours accidentally unbilled.
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Toggl vs RescueTime: Which One Should You Use?
As a freelancer, it is up to you to be productive and work efficiently. You have your clients and the tasks on your plate that need taking care of every day, so it’s easy for days to go by without getting anything done because it’s just too tempting to put off hard work. The solution? Invest in a time tracking tool that helps track how much time you spent on specific activities throughout the day!
Both Toggl and RescueTime are popular tools on the market. However, they have different features which set them apart from one another. In today’s article, we’ll make a general overview of both apps and break down some key features you should know about to make it easier to decide which tool fits your needs better.
In addition to that, we’ll compare Toggl and RescueTime with Timing, our premium time tracking tool for Mac users, as an excellent alternative. It offers some unique features that freelancers enjoy. If you want to test it out right away, use the 14-day free trial and download it now.
Let’s start by covering the basics of time tracking.
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9 Best RescueTime Alternatives in 2022 [A Comprehensive Review]
We can all agree that the Covid-19 pandemic had a tremendous impact on the work culture of most companies across the world. According to statistics, the past few years have seen more people embrace the remote work culture and have given rise to the significant number of freelancers we have today. Here are some interesting stats you should know about:
- 41% of the US workforce in 2020 were freelancers, as opposed to about 28% in 2013
- 28% of Americans are now full-time freelancers
- 34% of US citizens started freelancing at the beginning of the pandemic
- In the US, there are about 57 million freelancers today
- 86% of freelancers work remotely, usually from their homes
One major challenge of working remotely or freelancing is improper time management. It is very easy to lose track of time and work with distractions like social media. Most freelancers find it difficult to track actual time spent working on projects and tasks accurately, which affects their productivity, performance and finances; since they are mostly paid per hour or project. Thus, we can see the need for proper time tracking.
Since there are many time tracking tools available, one of them being RescueTime, we understand how difficult it may be to choose the best tool for your projects. In this article, we will help you learn more about RescueTime and its alternatives. Also, we will tell you what you need to know about their features, prices, pros, cons, and reviews from other freelancers.
One of the most exciting alternatives we will share today is our Timing, an intuitive automatic time tracking tool and premium product for Mac users who want to stay at the top of their game by increasing productivity and efficiency. Timing tracks all domains, apps and documents on your Mac and helps you identify distractions and unproductive hours automatically, ensuring you don’t leave any time accidentally unbilled.
You can use our 14-day free trial and start tracking your time today. The Timing app is easy to download and set up, and you can try out all available features for free.
Now that we’ve covered the basics let’s move on to the rest of this article.
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How to Use Time Tracking for Better Freelance Job Bidding
Bidding on new jobs is arguably one of the most complex parts of working freelance. You need to send proposals to secure more work, but you don’t get paid for sending bids. Plus, there is plenty of rejection involved, making bids feel like an arduous chore.
Producing accurate bids will ensure you get paid what you’re worth, but first, you need a clear understanding of your time. You need to know how long tasks take to complete to factor into your proposals. If you get this part wrong, you could make a lot less money than you intend, or worse; you could even lose money.
For instance, let’s say you expect it will take three hours to write an article for a new client. But when you get into the task, it actually takes five hours. That’s two hours of unpaid time. If you knew the article would take five hours, you might have asked for a higher rate. Getting the time estimate right is even more critical for those who bill by the hour.
So how do you get a firm understanding of how you spend your time? Guesses and estimates are not good enough. You need to create your proposals from a data-based perspective by looking at your history. To get this information, you need to track your own time using time tracking software to get this information.
In this article, we teach you how to produce accurate freelance job bids by using time tracking software. These tips will make sure you are getting paid for your work.
