I am an excellent procrastinator and I love a good Gantt chart. The combination of these traits gets me into trouble when it comes to project management and productivity tools. I spend an inordinate amount of time testing every new app. Then, I devote even more time getting them to talk to each other. All in an effort to save time later.  Luckily, as a freelance strategist and storyteller, I can justify the time I spent testing  (and procrastinating) by sharing what I learned with nonprofit leaders, writers, solopreneurs, and like-minded productivity explorers.

In other words, you can benefit from the spoils of my procrastination. Here are my five favorite absolutely free and incredibly useful project management and productivity tools which are worth every second I spent testing them.*