
Ask HN: Freelancers, do you have the same problem? - carterharrison
I have 10+ Slacks, Microsoft Teams, and Workplace groups. Am apart of Trellos, Airtables, and Jira boards. And use dozens of design&#x2F;wireframe tools. The list goes on forever. Not to mention these are all spread across multiple different email addresses, and projects.<p>Every client of mine uses different communication, design, and project management tools. I spend so much time switching between accounts, and figuring out where the hell everything is.<p>Do you have the same problem, if so, how do you cope with it?
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user_agent
What works for me: it's not a problem with tools, but with tactics of
communication. Make one person from every company you work with responsible
with keeping you in the loop (that doesn't mean to CC you on every mail) and
answering your calls when you have doubts; only those two things - not asking
for much, right? Make wrap-ups often. Don't read Slack BS, jizz. It's neither
pleasant nor valuable. One can spend an entire life in an endless loop of
"communication". Slack isn't communication. Real comms has to do with:
agreements, negotiation, partnerships (even if temporary ones), taking
responsibility. That last one might be the most important one.

And don't attend meetings that aren't absolutely mandatory for you.

Make someone else from the companies you work with to mark your progress on
their internal systems however they like to use them, purely based on your to-
the-point (calls, mails) communication.

With that approach you can take 5 more customers ;) All of the above sounds
kinda crazy, but it's been tested in the battlefield for more than 10 years.
Being as pissed as you are, @Op, is the best time to make those changes. Howk!

PS: If someone from you costomers' side isn't OK with that approach - fire the
bullshitter. Take one that is going to comply. World is full of morons doing
mostly virtue signaling, endless meetings, etc, instead of getting to the
point.

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pmontra
The basics are: I have a virtual desktop per customer (Ubuntu Gnome), one
Firefox window per desktop and I use container tabs to be able to log multiple
times in the same service with different accounts. One emacs window per
desktop, one terminal per desktop, etc. I use a password manager and I keep a
desktop for me (email, WhatsApp web, telegram.) Unfortunately the Slack
desktop app can't be split in multiple windows. I have to move it among
desktops.

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carterharrison
Good idea, never thought of using Firefox container tabs. May be able to do a
similar thing with Chrome profiles.

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mech422
I actually go a step further and use separate Firefox profiles per
project/client... That way, you can have unique plugins/bookmarks/passwords
and its easy to backup. You can just create multiple Firefox shortcuts on your
desktop with the '-P "profile"' and -no-remote and -new-instance options.

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mrassili
I would love to know what you folks are using, any tool your recommend?

