Contract Worker - Freelancing Experiences

Using Gmail as Your Project Manager

by Rico on May 29th, 2007

If you do most of your work online, then you probably check out your email at least once a day. And chances are, you use Gmail.

Gmail is great because instead of managing a long list of your individual messages, it bunches Gmails with the same subject line into “conversations.” The upside of this is that aside from having a neater inbox, you can easily follow the back-and-forth exchange, since the replies are sorted in chronological order.

I heartily recommend Gmail for freelancers of all shapes, sizes, and skills, so long as they use a computer and email regularly. That’s because the conversations feature lets Google’s free web-based email service do double-duty as your efficient and skillful project manager.

In Gmail, you don’t have to delete old messages. If you no longer need to see a certain conversation on your inbox, you can simply “archive” it. The conversation is still there, but it no longer clutters up your inbox. This is a great feature, because I never know if my previous emails contain crucial info I’ll need for future projects.

Anyways, enough about the Gmail advertisement (Google should be paying me for this!). Let’s get to the nitty-gritty.

Or not. Like I said, Gmail makes project management easy. Using the conversation and archive features in tandem, Gmail presents an easy-to-update list for you to keep track of your projects. Especially if all your projects begin with an email from your client.

As you and your client send each other messages, providing specifications, feedback, changes, or drafts, your discussions are kept together in one conversation. This keeps everything neat, and in case you forgot a project particular, you can just refer to the older images.

Once you’ve finished the project, just select the conversation and archive it. Now the finished project is out of view, signifying its completion, but you can still consult the information involved with it.

In other words, Gmail works as a project manager because it reminds you which projects are pending, as well as provides a record of all your discussions with clients. To summarize, here are three steps involved in using Gmail as a project manager:

1. Once you receive an email from the client starting a project, keep it in your inbox. Make to reply to the original message to start building the conversation.
2. To consult any previous discussions regarding the project, just check the conversation between you and your client.
3. After you finish the project, archive the project conversation to indicate its completion, hide it and keep your inbox neat.

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