These 4 Apps Make Self Employment Much Easier

From gamifying your focus to creative editing, you’ll wonder how you survived without these apps.

Being your own boss sounds all fancy until you realise how easy it is to lose focus. Even if you have a great work ethic, it's easy to hop from one fun article to another and realise an hour later that you’re watching cat videos.

Losing focus is one thing, and being efficient is another. In the creator economy, you don’t just put your energy into working for yourself and your clients, but also to build your brand.

Some of my clients have discovered me on platforms like LinkedIn and Medium. My ebook downloads enhanced (over 400 in 15 days) because of the relationship I’ve built with over a thousand readers on my newsletter and recently on Twitter.

So each day, there’s so much energy you put into building a brand. You create fresh content often and, unlike your day job, this content may come up while taking a shower or when you get in bed or while working. And these are plain distractions, aren't they?

It was overwhelming in the beginning, but with the help of these tools, I’m balancing work, branding, and life, so much better.

Here are the apps that can make your self-employment easier, and also make you more productive.

1. Forest

I have been using this app since 2017. Earlier to study during university, and now when I’m working. It's such a simple and beautiful app that I recommend everybody to install it.

Here’s what it does: gamification to help you focus.

You set a focus timer, and a sapling gets planted in your forest that becomes a tree towards the end of the timer. If you use your phone during this time, the tree will die and your forest will have a leaf-less tree. Now, don't you want your forest to look all pretty?

Watching the sapling grow into a tree makes you stay away from touching the phone so you don’t disrupt the process.

You can also see trends of your focus hours and with each undistracted completion, you get points you can use to get different trees and decor for your forest.

This gamification of creating a pretty forest makes it fun and makes me get back to the app again and again.

Cost

$2

Click here to access this website.

2. Fotor

Now, not all of us have the luxury to hire a designer for all our creatives. Plus, with technology today, we can do most stuff ourselves. The issue is, we’re all lazy people and don’t want to waste time on apps that make it just so difficult for us to design. That’s where Fotor helps — helping you finish your design in a few clicks.

Here’s what it does: Helps you design creatives from your laptop and phone.

Fotor has over 100,000+ templates. These include book covers, yearbook, album covers, ID cards, report cards, magazine covers, phone wallpaper, and social media posts templates including Facebook ads, Instagram stories, YouTube thumbnails, etc — there’s something for everybody.

Its interface is smooth, and the variety is plenty. The variety helps because then it requires little effort on your part to make creatives and helps you with design ideas.

You can use Fotor to:

• Edit a photo
• Create a design
• Create a collage

Everything you do gets saved on your personal cloud, so you don’t have to worry about your designs getting lost.

Look at this creative I made for a tweet that I’ve scheduled about my ebook:

The above creative took about 8 minutes to be made and the Twitter post template made it an effortless process.

Cost

Free; Paid versions are charged annually: Pro ($3.33/ month) and Pro+ ($7.5/ month).

Click here to access this website.

3. Hypefury

So that scheduled tweet I spoke about in the previous point, it's through Hypefury.

Anybody who’s into written content would know the power of Twitter. It helps you become a better copywriter and establish a presence online, isn’t that amazing?

By just writing my thoughts, I have 915 followers right now. It was 800 three days ago and 500 a month ago. I’m not using any hack here. I’m just trying my best to add value consistently.

The more good stuff you tweet, the more you grow. But tweeting a lot is time-consuming, even if you always have great content in your head.

So what can you do? Automation.

Here’s what it does:

• Schedules tweets
• Automatically retweets after 12 hours to give your tweet a second life
• Auto-plug: automatically adds a tweet to promote your link after your tweet reaches a certain amount of likes/retweets
• Evergreen: retweets an old well-engaged tweet
• Inspires you to tweet when you feel lost by showing you popular tweets

You get to decide your rules — how many times do you want to tweet, what are your ‘evergreen’ tweets, what will be your auto-plug and at how many likes or retweets should it be tweeted.

Look at the below screenshot for example. My ‘rule’ is that after 15 likes on a tweet, my ebook link should be tweeted under that. Here’s what that looks like:

To be honest, I’m currently on my trial and I’m seeing significant results. But it’s not the results that make it amazing, it's my time and energy that's saved. I can scribble my thoughts and plan for days, weeks, and even months ahead on this tool.

You can also use this on other platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Only Fans and Instagram.

Cost

$19/month; $190 annually.

Click here to access this website.

4. Headspace

Hey, how will this help me become more efficient as a business owner? You must be thinking.

Here’s what it does: helps you meditate.

Now, I come from a land that’s famous for yoga and meditation. It’s where people like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Yuval Noah Harari and plenty others have learnt meditation.

And I too have learnt a world-famous meditation technique that attracts millions around the world, called the inner engineering program.

No matter what meditation technique I learn, I ultimately bounce back to Headspace. I’ve been using it for a year and a half and my mental health has improved. I’m now more aware of my thoughts, stress, self-talk, and my environment.

When I’m overwhelmed with work, feeling stressed out, unable to sleep, or for a daily meditation post-workout — this is my go-to app.

In fact, at the time of writing this, I am in bed for 15 days post-surgery and the 10-day meditation course on rehab has been a blessing to overcome such a challenging time.

There are many courses ranging from basics to happiness to financial stress, unemployment, and so much more. I’ve completed courses on self-esteem, managing anxiety, creativity, prioritisation, and navigating change. The courses range from 10 to 30 days and there are single meditations too. If you don’t want to choose either, there’s also a simple daily meditation with a different theme each day.

A healthier mind will help you with clarity, focus, creativity, and stress management.

Cost

It depends on your country. Annual membership is $10.79 in my home country and $69.99 in the US. If you’re a student, it’s only $9.99/year.

Click here to access this website.

Lastly

Self-employment is more than productivity porn. It’s demanding and not always easy, because what makes you or breaks you are your own decisions. I hope these apps can help you upgrade your lifestyle and create quality work.

Author’s note: Some of the links mentioned in this article are sponsored. However, I’m currently a paying user of all of them and highly recommend them.

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