Freelancers and small agency owners spend a significant amount of time every week writing client update emails. This process involves checking progress across multiple platforms, reviewing old messages, and crafting professional updates, which can be repetitive and time-consuming.
This problem leads to wasted time and mental energy, especially on Fridays, which could be better spent on productive tasks. It also causes frustration and annoyance, affecting overall productivity and job satisfaction.
Pain Points
- Wasting almost an hour every Friday writing updates
- Checking progress across 5 different tabs
- Crafting professional updates without sounding repetitive
- Mentally draining to sound productive even when progress is messy
- Constantly reviewing old messages and remembering delays
I built a tiny internal tool for myself because I got tired of rewriting client update emails every single friday. I do freelance product/design work and every week looked the same. open 5 different tabs, check progress, look through old messages, remember what got delayed and figure out what to say professionally without sounding repetitive. I realized I was wasting almost an hour every friday just writing updates that were basically a waste of time. So one weekend I hacked together a dashboard. It pulls completed tasks from Linear, overdue items, current sprint progress and next steps. then turns it into a clean email draft automatically. The first version looked terrible but it worked surprisingly well. The thing is I never planned to turn it into anything. I just wanted to stop ending every friday annoyed. Then I showed it to 2 friends I know from a coworking space and both immediately asked if they can use it. One of them runs a tiny dev agency and said client updates were one of the most mentally draining parts of the week because you constantly feel like you have to sound productive even when progress is messy. A lot of software ideas sound boring until you realize how many people quietly hate doing the same annoying task every week.