4 free tools whose existence I’m thankful for

How are we approaching mid-September already?

While I’d like to say I’m surviving and thriving, the flavour of the month for my work situation feels more like “crying and dying”. I read about other freelancers writing 4 articles and refreshing other articles in one week and I go, seriously, how do they do it? Lol.

Anyway, I wanted to share 4 free(!) tools whose existence I’m so thankful for. Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to share this iconic line from the Pokémon games:

So, without further ado, here are the tools!

1. Gmail’s snooze email feature

This Gmail feature lets you set a date and time at which an email will return to the top of your inbox in the future. (Here is Google’s help doc about it.)

For example, if you snooze your email until next Monday at 8am, the email will disappear from your inbox and appear at the top of it next Monday at 8am. (You can find it in your inbox’s “Snoozed” tab in the meantime.)

This is unless you get a reply to your email. If so, the email will be automatically unsnoozed and appear at the top of your inbox (like any new email you get). If you still need the email to be snoozed, you’ll have to snooze it again.

I use this feature a LOT. (As of writing, I have…*counts* 8 snoozed work emails.) It’s handy for staying on top of projects and making sure they keep progressing if I’m waiting for a client to do something, e.g.:

• Reply to my question
• Review my draft

So, if the snoozed email reappears in my inbox, I know the client hasn’t replied. And that’s my cue to follow up (or snooze the email again if I want to give them more time to reply).

I also use the snooze feature to remind myself to come back to an email later. For example, maybe an email comes in late in the day and I want to attend to it tomorrow. So, I’ll snooze it until tomorrow so my inbox looks a bit emptier (for the time being).

My snooze duration depends on the situation. For example, I usually give clients a week to review drafts before I follow up. So, I might snooze draft submission emails for a week.

2. Tabs Outliner

For any given project, I tend to have at least 10 open browser tabs for my draft, my email thread with the client, my research, the thesaurus, my spell checker etc etc.

Manually opening all these tabs whenever I want to resume work on a project is a hassle. And I don’t want to close them until the client gives their final approval on the project.

But if I never closed my tabs, my browser would be super cluttered. I would also be unnecessarily straining my computer’s resources.

Which is why I use Tabs Outliner, a Chrome extension that lets you save groups of browser tabs for future convenient access.

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One group = one project’s tabs. I just double-click a tab group and voilà! My tabs for that project all automatically open in a new window.

Then, when I’m done for the day, I close the tab group and all its tabs automatically close, ready for me to reopen again.

And just last week, I accidentally discovered I can group my tab groups 🤩 I promptly created groups with my clients’ names and parked my tab groups for their projects together.

3. Time Zone Converter

You might have seen others. This is the one I use.​

I’ve stopped checking and doing mental calculations on time zone differences if I’m scheduling meetings with others based overseas (as I’ll talk about shortly!).

I just go to the Time Zone Converter website and plug in everybody’s cities or time zones to find a time that works for all of us. The smiley faces that tell you whether a time works for someone is a nice touch too.

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Simple but effective.

(Tip: If you aren’t sure where a person is based, they might just say so on their LinkedIn profile. Though it’s good to still ask them to double-check.)

4. Google Meet

You probably already know about this video conferencing app and how it works.

I prefer it over Zoom because it’s free. I don’t have to pay to talk to people for longer than 40 minutes (which is often the case).

Plus, Google Meet’s features have gotten better over time. My current favourites are its recording capabilities and automatic captions.

But what I like best is how it (and competing apps, to be fair) makes meeting others so easy.

I still marvel over this whenever I think about it:

Like, you mean I can talk to anyone in the world? Without spending large amounts of time and money to meet them? And where I can close new projects, discuss ideas, hear their stories and learn new things?

Seriously, the power of science is amazing.

More freelancer news

The Platform Workers Bill has been passed

The Platform Workers Bill, which gives platform workers stronger protections, has been passed.

Platform workers are people like freelance delivery riders and private-hire drivers, who get their jobs from platform companies that have full control over the available jobs and their rates.

With the passing of the Bill:

• Platform companies will have to make CPF contributions for platform workers below 30 years old, and those 30 and older who opt in to receive CPF contributions
• Platform companies will have to pay work injury compensation if a platform worker gets injured on the job
• Platform workers can form associations to better negotiate with platform companies

There are concerns about the increased costs that will result from implementing these laws. And at least one forum writer thinks the laws “over-protect” platform workers.

We’ll just have to see how things play out after the laws take effect from 1 Jan 2025.

You can read the news of the passing of the Bill here and the full Bill text here.

Singapore’s acting industry isn’t all glitz and glamour

Some actors have spoken out about the poor work conditions they and their colleagues have faced, which include:

• Unsafe work practices, including during the filming of intimate scenes
• Long work hours with no meal breaks
• Low pay

The article also explores what’s being done to improve actors’ welfare on set. Especially since many actors are freelancers who can theoretically set their own prices and working standards, but in reality, the industry may not be willing to accept these.

​Check out the full story here. I find the interviewees’ experiences quite chilling, actually.