https://go.oldfriends.studio/cushion
When running your own business, pain points surface quickly and burn a hole in your pocket. Every hour of boring secondary work means you're not making money from client projects or doing something you enjoy. Thankfully boring often means repetitive and software is thirsty for repetition.
Every time a project came through the door, I found myself recalculating how much I was making and spending. I needed to weigh the intrigue of the project against my near-term finances. Important, but boring, so I built a simple spreadsheet to plug-in potential projects and see how they stack up against my spending and savings goals.
Project-based income makes time management a high-stakes decision. Saying yes to one project means saying no to time for ops, personal things, and potentially better projects. You can lower the stakes by reducing the number of steps in the decision, so you:
I typically pull up this sheet whenever I'm questioning how to spend my time.
For example:
Deciding between projects
Considering a large purchase
Taking a break from paid work
Wondering if I should do things to drum up new leads
Note: This isn't bookkeeping