Apps that make my life easier (and prettier! 🌸)

Trello Especially when I’m working within a larger team on a social media client, I love using Trello to plan, delegate and organise tasks. The dashboard layout means that it’s easy to see where you are with assets or captions at a glance, and tag them so everyone knows exactly what’s going on, and how long it’ll be until we’re ready to hit PUBLISH.

If you’ve onboarded with me recently, you might be familiar with my Strategy Dashboard - a tool you get access to once I sign you as a client. We’ll share it, gathering all the information and inspiration we need to get going on your killer social strat, all with dates, deadlines and status tags.

Like Google Sheets or Excel but just… infinitely better. Airtable is essentially a hybrid of a spreadsheet and a database. And it’s a much more efficient way of working, because it’s so incredibly customisable – and yeah, that means colour coding, tags and all that other stuff that tickles my brain in all the right places 🌈

It’s perfect for teams, and for freelancers like me working with clients, because each member can organise and view the data in a way that suits them. So if sorting by deadline works for a manager who’s signing off content, they can have it at the same time as a designer can have the content sorted by priority so they know what to work on first. It’s cloud-based, so it updates in realtime, helping everyone stay across the project status quo.

One of the main features I love about Airtable is its ability to integrate with other apps and systems. You can import your data from Google Sheets, Notion, Excel, Trello, monday.com, even Facebook. For example, when someone signs up for a Power Hour with me, FillOut, the booking system I use, will export that person’s details into an AirTable for me, so I have all their data in the right place, ready to get them everything they need ahead of our appointment.

I was 37 when I discovered I had both Autism and ADHD, and after that things started slotting into place. I know for a fact that I’ve always appeared organised, present and helpful to those around me, but it turns out it takes an incredible amount of work - work I didn’t even realise I was putting in until I was deep into burnout.

These days, I generally live really well with neurodiversity, and there are some tools that really help me with that. InFlow is one of them. A mobile app that is founded and backed by clinicians with ADHD themselves, it’s a constant source of info, tools and hacks to help with my day-to-day.

I love checking in every day for a bit of learning or reflection, and I’m a regular at their daily Zoom co-working sessions - keeping myself accountable by working through my to-dos with help from virtual “body-doubling” and a community full of encouragement and support. Would 100% recommend if you have ADHD too!

Notion If I had to commit to only one app for the rest of my life, it would be Notion, aka Bae. I rely on Notion across all areas of my life - work, hobbies, kids and family stuff. I play Dungeons & Dragons with friends, for example, and my Dungeon Master HQ on Notion is my pride and joy.

At it’s core, Notion is a note-taking app, but that only scratches the surface of what it’s capable of. It’s fantastic for teams or individuals to use as a hub for resources, workflows, content calendars, databases and more. You can organise tasks and responsibilities by status, assignee, content type, project and more, and there are different views like tables, calendars and kanbans depending on how you like to work. A quick search on YouTube or SkillShare will show you the possibilities it offers, and I love that users can create and share templates too.

In my work, I use Notion for content calendars, meeting notes, and client hubs. Each of the brands I work with gets there own home there where all their information is kept, so I can access everything I need quickly and easily, and manage each project efficiently.

Slack is my app of choice for keeping in touch with clients, especially if I’m working with a team of more than 1. The ability to set up channels means you can keep teams, and within that projects and meetings, organised, and at it’s most basic it’s just a really seamless and user-friendly app for instant messaging and idea sharing. You can even create smaller team Huddles with audio and video. Microsoft Teams? I don’t even know her.

Slack let’s you manually set your status, or sync it with your calendar to automatically update when you’re away from your desk or on a call. There’s also some really cool community features if you’re building a fan or student base. All alongside an awesome mobile app that’ll notify you when you’re on the go.

Finch calls itself “Your new self care best friend” and honestly, it’s the cutest thing ever. If you love a to-do list that rewards you as you go (and maybe you might’ve loved taking care of a Tamagotchi once upon a time), Finch can give you the motivation you need to get things done.

Get "Rainbow Stones” for completing tasks, build out self care areas to help you prioritise what you need, and –the best part, if you ask me– spend your stones on outfits and furniture for your “birb house”.

Sure, it sounds childish, but in all honestly IDGAF if it’s making my day easier and cuter. Add your friends and send each other encouragement and compliments, assign an egg that needs nurturing to a task you need to do more often and get an instant dopamine hit when it hatches into a gorgeous little micro-pet. Honestly, I live for this stuff.

With gratitude challenges, breathing exercises and opportunities to reflect on how you did things, it can teach you a lot about yourself and your habits, and help you build new ones more easily!

Look, I’ll be straight with you: I know I work in social media, with all its 3 second hooks and 240 character limits etc etc, but I’m a long-form girlie at heart. And I live and breathe Substack.

Imho, THE platform to watch, Substack is your hub for email newsletter subscriptions, with some added bonus content in-app and on desktop. With some free content and the opportunity to sign-up to pay a few ££ a month for your faves’ hot takes or niche knowledge, I love it because everything is one place. I have marketing advice from ICYMI by Lia Haberman, pop culture commentary from Ari’s Threads and Taylor Lorenz, and queer/trans news from Erin in the Morning.