Built myself a little command center for my freelance work this week. It’s called Bench.

Contra handles the contracts and payments, but my day-to-day was scattered across Contra chats, Gmail, my calendar, Notion, and a notes app. So I pulled it all into one place:

• A dashboard showing what needs me today: unread messages, overdue tasks, past-due invoices, leads that have gone quiet

• Each project gets its own page with scope, deliveries, tasks, links, and the full message thread from Contra and email

• A pipeline for leads, including a “Ghosted” column, because we’ve all been there

• A time tracker for the hourly stuff

• It syncs with my Contra projects and invoices every morning

Curious how other freelancers here keep track of everything. Spreadsheets? Notion? Pure chaos?

The Ghosted column is painfully relatable. Does the morning sync use Contra's API?

Who is the art director when you are a one person studio?

Me, apparently. I pick the concept, argue with myself about it, change the name three times, and then critique my own logo at midnight.

Working solo means every decision has my fingerprints on it. There is no committee to hide behind and no one to blame. It is slower in some ways and much more honest in others.

If you freelance, how do you give yourself useful feedback?

Minimal yet so elegant. You made the products shiny perfectly !