Business is going well and I am in need of a basic time planning tool. My work style has changed from one that is management consulting-like (1 project at a time, from start to finish), to a more erratic (creative?) work schedule. I take on many projects at the same time, ponder about creative approaches in parallel, and have become much, much faster in execution once I have the ideas for the killer slides in my head.

With all of this, it has become hard to get a good grip on my actual work load and give clients a realistic delivery date of a project. Most project planning tools available are designed for large projects executed by multi-person teams doing tasks that are defined in days and not hours. These tools also find it difficult to manage multi-tasking: one person who is working on more than one project at a time.

So, I wonder whether you have come across a tool that allows me to do the following:

• Quickly add lots of short projects
• Sync with a calendar to take into account holidays and other commitments
• Put in hard deadlines for some projects, while leaving others open
• Allow multi-tasking