Freelancing while you build something of your own

You have two clients on retainer, a proposal to write for a third, and something of your own you started building months ago. Client work carries a deadline someone else set. New business carries a deadline you feel but never write down. Your own product carries none, so it gets whatever is left, which is usually nothing.

By Friday you know it got nothing, and by Friday there is nothing left to trade for it. This is not a discipline problem. The three streams live in three places: client work in an inbox and a shared tracker, new business in your head, your product in a notes file you open on Sunday. Nothing puts them side by side, so nothing shows them competing for the same Tuesday.

Polylane starts with a matrix. Projects run down one axis, channels run across the other, and every pursuit sits on one screen instead of in its own tool.

• Projects — the client retainer, the client build, new business, and your own product. One row each, including the one nobody is chasing you for.
• Channels — the kinds of work that repeat across all of them, such as delivery, calls, writing, and outreach.

Every task lands in a cell, so one screen answers a question you cannot answer today: what is next week actually made of? Nine delivery tasks, one proposal, and an empty row for your product is a fact you can act on before Monday, rather than a feeling you get on Friday.

The default channels are content channels — YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Website. Add your own for how you work. Free includes two custom channels, which covers delivery and outreach.

A proposal is never one task. It is a scoping call, a draft, a follow-up, and a contract to send. Link them into a batch and they move as one.

That earns its keep the moment a client moves. When the second client pushes a review by a week, you move the batch once and the whole chain shifts with it. You see what it lands on straight away, which is often the afternoon you had held for your own product.

Drag a batch onto a day and it takes real time on a real calendar. Every task carries a duration, so a Tuesday holding six hours of client delivery looks full, because it is.

Three views read the same data: Overview for the grid, Flow for sequence, and a Graph view for how the pieces connect. On Solo, scheduled work exports as .ics, so it reaches the calendar you already live in.

Say the grid opens like this. The first client has three days of delivery. The second has a review on Wednesday. The proposal needs two hours before Thursday. That leaves Thursday afternoon, and your product row is empty.

Polylane does not create a fifth day. What changes is that you are looking at this on Monday morning with something still to trade. Give Thursday afternoon to the product, move the proposal, or decide the product waits a week on purpose. Those are three decisions. Finding out on Friday is none of them.

• You quote against a week you can see. When a prospect asks whether you can start Monday, the answer comes from the grid instead of from optimism.
• New business stops being what you do between contracts. Give it a row and it competes for time like everything else, which is the point.
• A moved client deadline shows its cost. You see what the shift displaces before you agree to it, not after.
• Your own product gets scheduled, or gets skipped on purpose. Skipped on purpose is still visible next week. Lost by default is not.

Free covers 2 projects, the default channels plus 2 custom ones, daily calendar scheduling, and task linking. That runs the whole loop across one client and your own product, which is enough to find out whether seeing the grid changes your week. Free stays on one device: no cloud sync and no calendar export.

A second client makes three projects, and that is where Solo starts. Solo is $19/mo (₹499/mo incl. GST), or $180/yr paid annually. It unlocks unlimited projects and channels, cloud sync across devices, and .ics export, and it starts with a 14-day trial.

Every paid plan carries a 14-day money-back guarantee, and you can cancel any time. Cancelling deletes nothing — extra projects go read-only and unlock again if you come back. Current prices, currencies, and the founding rate are on the pricing page.

A freelance week puts specific pressure on a planner, so here is what Polylane does not do yet. You would find all of it in week two anyway.

• Google Calendar sync is push only, Polylane to Google. Events you create in Google do not come back. Two-way sync is not shipped, and we will not describe it as though it were.
• No mobile app. Polylane runs in a browser, so replanning between client calls needs a laptop.
• No integrations and no import. If a client runs their own tracker, nothing flows across. You enter the commitment it represents and plan against that.
• No time tracking and no invoicing. This is a planner. Keep whatever you bill with.
• No AI. Nothing estimates your week or fills your calendar for you. That is a design choice, not a roadmap gap.
• Studio is not available yet. The shared workspace for up to 5 seats is listed at $39/mo and is founding waitlist only. If you subcontract and want a collaborator in the same grid, it is not shippable today.

Take the seven days you have already committed to. Put your clients, your new business, and your own product on the grid, link what moves together, and drag it onto the days. If your product has nowhere to go, you have learned that before the week starts instead of after it.

Start free — 14 days of Solo, no credit card required. If you would rather ask first whether this fits how you work, email support@smatsols.com and a person who works on the product will answer.