on all of these things.

Today’s project has been crafting a personal communication policy/manifesto/whatchamacallit, because now that I’m starting to come out from under my rock it’s like the psychic trumpets have sounded, and I’m being blasted with a fire hose of emails and notes and requests and info.

This feels pretty key to everything else. I know without having a plan for this I will just keep spinning my wheels on all kinds of other things. 15 months ago

I’ve decided to switch from Freckle to Freshbooks. It makes me sad, because I love Freckle dearly, but I think I’ve finally outgrown it since the invoicing feature is sort of bolted on. I need something that bakes in the entire accounting piece so I can track all my expenses, not just the ones that are directly project-related.

I just paid for my next month of Freckle a few days ago, so I’m going to use this month to get up to speed with the free Freshbooks account, and then switch at the end of February when it’s time to pay up again.

Outgrowing your billing program is the good kind of problem, though.

::

[edit] After spending a chunk of time today going through all my possible options for this, I’ve actually decided to try out Xero instead of Freshbooks. Pairing it with WorkflowMax will replace 5(!) different tools I have my information spread among right now.

Accounting
Time tracking
Invoicing
Project management
CRM/lead tracking
Quotes/bids 15 months ago

I’m not a developer by nature, but I’m getting better at rooting around in other people’s code to make things do what I want. This is something I should take slightly more seriously though, so I started working through CodeAcademy exercises today.

http://www.codecademy.com/profiles/clover

Gamification makes everything better. Guys, there are badges. /nerd 16 months ago

But there are a lot of areas this involves… not just actual designs (although lord knows that’s part of it), but:

• professionalism/presentation
• workflow/process
• finding and learning better tools
• software mastery
• improving efficiency
• developing a “style”
• honing related skills
• continuing education
• improving billing/admin procedures
• adding revenue streams

This is something I want to take seriously this year. To live instead of exist, professionally speaking. 16 months ago