the ultimate toolkit for remote workers: mindsets and must-haves, for modern entrepreneurs

As humans have evolved, so too have our tools. In a technologically-driven and competitive business environment, what are the best tools for remote e-⁠resident entrepreneurs?

Back in the Palaeolithic era, our early ancestors figured out that sharp-edged stone flakes were good for cutting, and pointy sticks for hunting. These tools enhanced their abilities and increased their chances of survival and reproduction.

Technology has evolved from these simple tools to complex systems that amplify human potential. Today, tools and apps for remote workers continue this legacy. They've become a force multiplier for seamless communication, efficient project management, and collaborative workflows. These advancements help businesses and solopreneurs scale and enhance productivity, transforming work and maximising talents in a globalised, digital world.

The development of complex systems and applications both support our work and enable us to achieve feats previously thought impossible. Our work and lives are transformed. And our talents are maximised in a globalised, digital world.

In fact, we could say that the digital infrastructure of Estonian e-Residency represents the ultimate pinnacle of technological tooling that began with pointy sticks. It's unlocked the power to do business anywhere in the world, in a completely technology-driven environment.

Tools for today’s remote workers: a craft mindset

Has the abundance of digital technology numbed us to its potential and led us to take it all for granted, in 2024?

Arguably our ancestor nomads were the ‘remote workers’ of days gone by. These original nomads had to craft and maintain their tools and carry them on their back, wherever they travelled. From the mediaeval European blacksmith to the herdsman of the nomadic tribes, tools of the trade had to be learned and appreciated. There were no free downloads, or data migration services.

For the modern remote entrepreneur in any knowledge work sector, it’s very different. As recently as a decade ago, we mostly had one set of tools for communicating, productivity, a CRM, and somewhere to write and create things. If it was urgent and one of them wasn’t working, we could call and talk to each other.

Nowadays, it feels like every app is competing to be an all-in-one platform which does all of the above.

Just staying across it all would be a full-time business in itself. So, how can this be making us all more productive?

And what do you really need, when it comes to tools to do your remote work?

The mindset shift: What do you need the tool to DO?

When selecting tools for any task, it's crucial to shift your mindset from brand recognition and additional features to your core needs. This helps avoid the pitfalls of being swayed by marketing and superficial attributes. It also allows for a more pragmatic and effective tool selection process.

1. First, clearly define your core needs. Consider what the tool must accomplish to improve your workflow or productivity. For example, if you need a project management tool, identify whether your primary need is task organisation, team collaboration, or deadline tracking. By understanding these fundamental requirements, you can filter out options that do not meet these criteria, saving time and resources.
2. Next, assess the functionality of each potential tool in relation to your core needs. Avoid getting distracted by additional features or brand reputation. A well-known brand with numerous features might not serve your specific purposes as well as a less popular tool that excels in the areas critical to your work. Evaluate how each tool performs the essential functions you have identified. Consider user feedback and case studies to understand real-world applications.

The right tool is not the one with the most features or the best marketing. It's the one that fits seamlessly into your work process and addresses your primary needs effectively.  

Must-have remote tools in 8 categories of productivity

Hopefully every tool makes you productive in some ways, but we can loosely group the productivity tools into 8 categories:

1. Remote tools for projects and task tracking

There are many tools you can use to gather up and track the things you want to get done. And they can be useful whether you work alone or as part of a team. For many of us nowadays, projects involve complex and multi-stage endeavours, interdependencies and more than one person. 

To manage projects, track tasks and coordinate processes across roles and teams, have a look at tools like:

• Trello—deceptively simple and versatile kanban-style board with cards and columns. (For more complex teams and projects, Atlassian also makes Jira and Confluence.)
• Asana—great for more complex projects with lots of people involved and needing visibility and status for each task and subtask
• Monday.com—good team task and project tracking with attractive UI
• Omnifocus—the ultimate mac-based project and tasked based tool, but expensive and no collaborative options
• ClickUp—nice highly customisable interface, great for templates for repeating projects and workflows
• Microsoft Project—if you need resource tracking, contingencies and critical paths etc, then you need hardcore project management tools like this (see also Wrike, Jira). But most of us don’t!

2. Tools for remote collaboration and creativity

Remote workers have a choice of cloud-based creative tools to choose from, which are fully browser-based and collaborative. Exactly what you need will depend on your professional activity, but consider:

• Google Workspace tools, for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc—all designed for real-time collaborative access and editing, with no versioning problems or checking in and out
• Office 365—the cloud-based versions now have similar functionality to the Google tools, but without the free options and storage. Many enterprise clients will operate in a Microsoft environment though, so you might need a basic sub in order to do your work for them
• GitHub—for code repositories and technical documentation
• Canva—for creating images and graphics, especially for non-expert users (graphics pros will also want to master Figma for client work)
• Mural—for creating infinite virtual whiteboards, for ideation, retrospectives, and anything else you want to see and edit visually

3. Remote tools for reference material and documentation

Today the way you organise and access knowledge is greatly helped by AI tools. As such, you can probably pay less attention to the structure of your digital ‘second brain’ than you used to. Besides, it’s much easier these days to find what you’re looking for when you need it. First, gather your pearls of wisdom into one place. Then, think about how you will best capture these. And finally, make sure you can easily retrieve them (e.g. do you need offline access?) 

Tools to check out include:

• Evernote—one of the first dedicated note-taking apps, organised around notebooks, and still very effective
• Apple notes, or whatever is free on your operating system/device—there’s almost always something you can make a quick note on, wherever you are 
• Notion—Notion could be listed under any category here really as you can use it to build out complex project management systems and collaborations, but at its simplest it’s a great place to simply save links and information you might want to find again
• Google Docs—you can build a great personal and shareable knowledge base simply by linking together free Google Docs
• Contextual/graphical notes apps like Obsidian and Logseq—great if the way your mind works is all about the relationships and networks between bits of information
• Talknotes and other AI dictation apps—great for capturing ideas on the go (but dictating into a notebook app is a lot cheaper.)
• The camera and photo albums on your phone—simplest and free way to keep copies of ID, travel docs, etc.

Remote workers and digital nomads can’t carry physical reference material around with them, so some kind of digital library is essential for your personal knowledge management system.

4. Remote tools for storage of data

Beyond notes, you’ll need some place to put your documents, photos, projects, and more, because so much of our work today generates massive files and archives

First have a look at what you can get for free, with your email or phone or business suite. Then if you still find your drives filling up, take a look at:

• Dropbox—one of the originals, now incorporating some nice sharing touches and digital signing
• Physical back-up drives, or something like Apple Time Machine - secure and air-gapped, but then you have to carry or store it in the ‘real world.’
• iCloud storage—easy option for photos on your iPhone if nothing else but quite costly
• Google Drive—you can get a lot of this free, depending on your needs

(and if your local hard drive is still bursting at the seams, check that you are only syncing essential files—let the things you don’t need so often live in the cloud, and remove local copies).

5. Remote tools for calendars and scheduling

If your remote work involves appointments and meetings, you need some way to schedule those and then remember to show up for them.
The important thing about calendars is to have only one, where everything is listed! Because however location-independent you are, you can’t be in two places at once…

• Google calendar is versatile, free, and integrates with everything. Worth the learning curve to integrate with different services and display multiple calendars in one (such as a family calendar and personal/business)
• Fantastical—slick integration of calendar and tasks for Mac users
• Calendly—easy way for people to book time with you according to your availability and preferences, even to sell paid appointments (look also at Dubsado).

6. Remote tools for time tracking

If you're billing client work by hour or project, you will need a way to track the time you spend. And even that’s not the way you operate, it’s really insightful to track your time for a block of at least one week, every year or so, just to see for real where all your time goes.
NB—take a close look at the privacy policies of the ones that run in the background and log what you’re doing, and make sure you’re completely happy with their oversight.

Depending on your needs and motivation, have a look at:

• Toggl Track—generous free tier and great automations, leading to more accurate tracking
• Memtime—nice simple single user time tracking in browser, without fuss
• Hubstaff is great for larger teams and monitoring resources at project level
• Clockify—has a nice range of integrations (e.g. with Asana, to add a time tracking layer to team collaboration)
• Funkytime—a venture of e-⁠resident Jan Lagast, who believes that time tracking should be fun(ky)?

7. Tools for connecting and communicating remotely

We take instant communication by video, voice, and text for granted now, and there are more ways to do this than ever before.
If you’re freelancing, you will end up installing everything, because every client has their preference. To choose for yourself and your team, think about how you want that conversation to be visible, accessible, retrievable, etc. Having a crucial conversation stuck in someone’s inbox is not ideal when working asynchronously, but with AI tools now available even video calls can easily be analysed and made searchable.

You’re bound to come across:

• Microsoft Teams—used by larger teams and enterprise clients, as the communications layer on top of the Office software suite. 
• Video Conferencing—Zoom, GoogleMeet, Cisco WebEx… So many to choose from, so consider what you need vs cost (for example maybe you can manage with free Zoom if your meetings are under 40 minutes.)
• Slack—one of the first chat-based team spaces, now with a ton of integrations (but beware of disappearing historical content on the free plans)
• Whatsapp—in my opinion a horrible tool for business communications and groups of any size, but some will insist! See also: Discord, Telegram, Signal, etc.
  

8. Financial management and budgeting tools

The first consideration for Estonian e-residents should be to get to know the tools available to you from your local service provider. The various services listed in the e-⁠Residency Marketplace offer a range of budgeting and accounting tools and services, so shop around and see what best suits your needs.

Besides the Marketplace and if you're more the DIY-type, explore:

• Spreadsheets! Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers—all of these offer a lot of accounting functionality, for example to help you stay across your cash flow in multiple currencies, or analyse with your time tracking software to identify most/least profitable clients and lines of work
• Invoicing tools—Waveapp creates nice invoices, especially if you need something outside of your Estonian business suite to raise invoices to that business. Zoho Invoicing also has a free tier, and Paypal is highly customisable too (but watch out for high fees, especially across different currencies.)
• e-Financials is provided free for e-⁠resident businesses in their first year, so well worth a look.

Don’t get distracted by shiny new tools for remote work!

Of course it’s important to stay up to date on new developments in your industry and new apps which might earn their place in your tool set. Every knowledge worker needs a range of apps, some of which do many things, and others which do one thing exceptionally well. 

But then along comes a shiny new thing which sounds like it might be even better…
It's social media ad or landing page for the free trial will stress numerable benefits and emotional gains:

FREE for a month! what do you have to lose, by having a closer look?

The answer is, you lose your most precious resource as an entrepreneur—your time and attention. So, don’t get suckered by ‘free’ trials, and ask yourself first—does this new piece of software-as-a-service genuinely do something I cannot yet do with my existing tech stack? What would this tool replace, and to what benefit? If I can already do this thing, but I’m not finding a reason to do it in that way, then do I really need it?

You could always be doing other things with that time, things which could actually earn you money. So try to evaluate how much better the new shiny thing will be, and how long its marginal gains in productivity would be, to earn back the costs of switching over to it in the first place.

But how on earth do I choose the best stack of technology tools for my remote business?

Remember! You opted for e-⁠Residency and an Estonian company because you were drawn to de-risking and efficiency, as well as the latest in B2B digital technology. So don’t waste resources on application bloat.

When choosing the best stack for your remote business:

1. Start by understanding your individual needs and preferences. Identify the tasks you perform most often, and select tools that fit your workflow. 
2. Avoid scope creep, by defining project requirements and setting clear objectives from the start. Many tools overlap in terms of features. So, be mindful of potential overlap, before you realise you’re paying for three different online meeting platforms… For instance, if your project management software includes time-tracking features, you might not need a separate time-tracking tool. And if you duplicate, it only creates inefficiencies and makes it hard to find what you need.
3. Keep an eye on costs. If you find something is a vital part of your workflow it may be cheaper to pay an annual subscription for it. However, to help “Future You” manage cash flow, put a reminder in your system a few weeks before the renewal is due. Then you can reevaluate its usefulness, and either cancel if no longer justified, or budget to expect the outgoing payment.
4. Be mindful, sustainable, and nimble in your software choices. Start small and affordable by utilising free or low-cost options initially and scale up as needed. Aim for a balanced stack of apps where each tool has a distinct and essential role.
5. Reduce digital clutter and simplify your operations to foster sustainable growth of your solopreneur, startup, or scale-up business.