I do graphic design, e-commerce, and also manage the eBay selling for a client. I'm self-employed and don't currently have any employees working for me. However, my work gets very complicated because it's almost as if I'm managing three different businesses. For the two separate e-commerce businesses, my own and those of my clients, I have separate sets of inventory, shipments, listings, photos for the listings, product research, payments and invoices, etc., to keep up with, and then there's also the graphic design.
Because there are so many details to keep up with within three separate contexts, trying to keep up with it all while tying it together into one, cohesive big picture so that I can prioritize tasks is very difficult for one person.
Over the past three years, I've tried more project management solutions than I can list or even bring to mind at the moment. The book "Getting Things Done" was a game-changer for me, but finding a system that helped me to implement it was a different story. Using
Evernote alone just didn't work for me. Because my work involves so many different sets of files, links, and notes, I was soon buried under an avalanche of notes and notebooks, plus I needed more online links than offline notes. I needed a solution that was more geared towards task management, would allow for separation of the different contexts but would also tie them together, would allow enough customization to fit my unique situation, was attractive to look at (as I'm a visual thinker), but was user-friendly enough that it didn't require watching hours of video tutorials before you could even begin. The closest thing I found to meet my needs was IQTell, but then the app unfortunately closed down. Just when I'd decided I'd tried them all, I found MeisterTask. I can honestly say it is unlike any other solution I've tried, and it has simplified what was a very complicated situation.
