time management tips for busy entrepreneurs (free tools)

 

Time Management Tools for Online Entrepreneurs 

It's easy to manage the tasks your boss assigns you at the beginning of each week without relying on any tools. All it takes is setting priorities, scheduling them, and working on them one by one until they're all completed. However, managing projects is not that straightforward. Projects involve handling numerous tasks and keeping track of all the minor and major details related to the operational, administrative, and functional aspects.

Tasks such as overseeing the implementation of the work plan, monitoring financial resources, managing public relations, marketing, customer relations, human resources, legal affairs, and many other tasks require constant attention and supervision from you as the project manager. Even if there are specialists for each of these tasks, you, as the manager, need to follow up with them and receive regular reports on the progress and updates. This makes project management a significant burden for anyone, regardless of their organizational and managerial skills. Hence, project management tools were developed to assist with this purpose.

What Can Project Management Tools Offer?

Good project management tools can simplify the overall administrative process for both project managers and team members. Managing a project requires keeping team members informed about all updates and tasks they are responsible for, including deadlines, discussions, notes, and necessary modifications. This requires continuous communication and follow-up with all team members, which is where such tools come in to facilitate effective and efficient communication and follow-up, saving time and effort without needing to contact each person individually.

These tools provide a shared space for everyone involved in the project, enabling them to communicate, share, stay updated, and follow everything related to the project promptly without needing emails or chat programs that consume a lot of time and focus. Teams that don't use management and communication tools within the work environment send an average of 300 internal emails per week within a single team and spend over two hours daily reading and responding to these emails. Therefore, relying on project management tools is essential for speeding up work.

Additionally, these tools allow tracking tasks each team member is working on, understanding completed tasks, anticipating upcoming ones, identifying any work pressure on the team, and seeing who has the bandwidth for more tasks based on their current workload, all by simply glancing at the tool's dashboard without directly asking the concerned individuals.

Thanks to all these features and benefits that these tools offer, resulting in flexibility, seamless control over project management processes, and increased efficiency and productivity, workplaces today are increasingly adopting collaborative platforms and project management tools. Statistics indicate that 7 out of 10 tech projects use one of these tools, and about 97% of these projects reported that using these tools enabled them to serve more clients and made them 12% more efficient and productive compared to times when they weren't using any tools.

The Best Project Management Tools for Any Project

1. Ana

Ana is the first Arabic project management tool, developed by Hsoub, which offers various internet projects serving Arabic users worldwide and manages the largest Arabic freelance platforms, Mostaql and Khamsat. Ana is a tool that provides everything you need to manage your projects and remote team effectively. It features an easy-to-use interface where you can build and customize boards to suit your work style.

Through this tool, you can create different boards for each project you're working on and share these boards with your team. Within these boards, you can add various applications that suit the project's nature, such as a task list application, a notes application for advanced note-taking, a chat application for communication, a folder application for sharing and organizing files securely, a bookmark application for saving websites of interest, an RSS reader for automatic updates from relevant websites, and a quiet sounds application to help you focus on tasks during work.

Ana offers all the tools you need to facilitate the management and tracking of your project's growth and communication with the rest of the team in one place, enhancing productivity and focus on tasks. This tool is suitable for both small and large projects and is currently entirely free.

2. Airtable

Airtable is used by over 30,000 projects, companies, and institutions of all sizes. It allows users to manage their projects and organize tasks using relational databases in the form of tables (rows and columns). If you prefer using Excel sheets to organize your work tasks, this tool is likely suitable for you. It features an interface similar to Excel's rows and columns, with the option to switch the display style to Kanban, gallery, timeline, or your customized view saved for future projects.

This tool offers sharing options with team members, communication through group discussions, sending direct messages, uploading and sharing files from various sources, scheduling, notifications, and reminders. It is available in a free version with limited features or through multiple subscription plans to suit any type of small or large projects. Other similar tools include nTask, Hansoft, and Notion.

3. Asana

Launched in 2008 by Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook, Asana was created to address the need for such tools in tech companies. It quickly gained popularity beyond tech companies to various other sectors. Teams can create a complete shared workspace, organizing tasks, assigning them to responsible individuals, scheduling, discussing task-related topics, sending messages, and attaching files. The tool is free for teams with 15 members or less, with additional features available through paid plans. Similar tools include Workzone and Proofhub.

4. Wrike

Wrike was designed to help teams organize their administrative and operational efforts for projects. It is used by over 18,000 projects and institutions, including Land Rover, Airbnb, and Jaguar, with over 2 million users. The tool operates on a system of folders, projects, and tasks, allowing task assignment, discussions, scheduling, file attachments, and detailed project management. It gives unfastened and paid plans with various features.. Other similar tools include Hibox, Sendtask, and Jira.

5. Flow

Flow is an excellent choice if you seek a simple, easy-to-use tool without complexities. It enables planning, executing, monitoring, supervising, and discussing project tasks using lists and cards. Tasks can be distributed in lists, and discussions, file sharing, scheduling, and notes can be added to each card. It also offers features like exporting projects, guest memberships for temporary team members, and many more. Flow is available through paid plans, with a free trial for the basic plan. Similar tools include Dude Solutions and Monday.

6. Scoro

Scoro, launched in 2013, offers cloud-based business solutions that combine all administrative, operational, and functional project aspects in one place. It includes features like growth indicators, budget tracking, sales, expenses, time tracking, and customization for each client. The tool offers a trial period and requires a subscription for continued use. It does not offer a free plan. Similar tools include Mavenlink and Basecamp.

7. Toggl Plan

Toggl Plan, a side product of the popular time-tracking tool Toggl, uses a highly visual approach with drag-and-drop functionality for task management. Tasks can be organized into lists and subdivided into to-do lists. It also features task distribution, assignment, scheduling, sharing, discussion, and notifications. Toggl Plan offers a free trial and can be used for small teams of up to five members for free, with paid plans for larger teams. Similar tools include GanttProject.

8. Paymo

Paymo is suitable for individual freelancers or solo projects with a free version, but for teams of two or more, a paid plan is required. The tool allows project task management through lists and cards, time tracking, task sharing, file attachments, and reporting. Paymo focuses on user experience, providing flexible, streamlined tools for better team interaction and focus. Similar tools include Taiga and Freedcamp.

Conclusion

These project management tools are designed to enhance the administrative efficiency and effectiveness of any project, large or small, by facilitating supervision, follow-up, and task management across different work stages. They provide a work environment ensuring the highest standards of efficiency and effectiveness in communication and interaction among team members.