The four watches a freelancer should set up on day one, and everything to switch off first

Four things should ring a freelancer's phone: a matching Upwork job, a client after hours, a pricing email and a meeting soon. What to switch off, and how.

By Sohel Rana, Co-Founder, OLL.E

Published October 31, 2026

Four things should make a freelancer's phone ring: an Upwork job that fits you, a current client writing after hours, a lead asking what you charge, and a meeting that starts in ten minutes. Nearly everything else can go off on day one, because each app's default is set to make you open it.

On an iPhone, three of the four watches work fully, phone call included. The after-hours one reads other apps' messages, and that needs the OLL.E PinG keyring, because iOS does not let an app read other apps' notifications in the background.

Which notifications should a freelancer keep on?

None of the ones that came switched on. Here's the list; it takes one evening, and you do it once.

1. Turn off badges, the red numbers on app icons. They make you open an app to make a number go away, which is not a reason to open an app. On iPhone it is Settings > Notifications > the app > Badges, one app at a time. On Android, open Settings and search for "notification dots" (some phones call them app icon badges). All of them. Even Mail.
2. Go app by app and set each default to off, or to direct messages only. WhatsApp notifies you for every group, Gmail for every email, LinkedIn for someone looking at your profile. Off, not muted.
3. Switch off Upwork's promotional emails and digests in its notification settings. Once the first watch below is covering jobs, the saved-search email can go as well, since by then it is a second copy of news you already had.
4. Leave on the notifications from apps clients use to reach you: Upwork messages, WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram, SMS. Cut each to direct messages only. The after-hours watch reads those notifications, and a notification the app never sends is one OLL.E can't read.
5. News, shopping, banking promotions, the weather. Off. You will look these up when you want them.

A freelancer needs four things to ring and nothing else. The freelancers who lose money rarely lose it to silence. They lose it to the small rings that don't matter, each one a glance, each glance a slow walk back into the work, until the billable day is half gone and the one client message that counted is under a LinkedIn notification. Most freelancers know that day: busy from nine to six, with almost nothing to invoice at the end of it.

What should ring and what should wait?

Four watches, each a sentence you type into OLL.E with an alert level, an action and a source. Four is also the whole Free plan. It gives you four active watches and ten alerts a month between them, so on Free there is no slot left for anything else.

1. A phone call for an Upwork job that fits you

Type "Call me when a WordPress job over $1,000 from a US or UK client posts on Upwork", with your own skill, floor and countries, and a matching job becomes a phone call. By the time you pick up, OLL.E has written the bid letter and found the client's name, so the proposal can open with it. If a partner or assistant does your bidding, the same watch can forward the job to them. It reads public Upwork job posts, so there is no Upwork login, and it works fully on iPhone.

A call, because Upwork jobs go to whoever answers first. The hard part is deciding what to watch. Upwork X-Ray (upworkxray.com), our sister site, has free job statistics from 1.5 million Upwork jobs and free Telegram job alerts. Spend twenty minutes there before you write the sentence.

2. An alarm for a current client writing after hours

This is the watch that reads your phone's notifications: WhatsApp, Slack, SMS, Telegram, Upwork messages. On Android you grant OLL.E notification access. On iPhone it needs PinG, which relays the notifications to OLL.E and rings on its own speaker. The sentence is "Wake me if a current client messages me after 10pm", plus who counts, by name or as "anyone I have an active project with". OLL.E sends a holding reply you wrote once, something like "Got this, I'll be on it first thing", and sounds an alarm. On iPhone that reply is a draft you confirm with a tap.

3. A phone call when a lead asks about pricing

This one drafts a reply and holds a slot in Google Calendar while your phone rings. The sentence is "Call me when a lead emails about pricing or a quote"; add "not existing clients" if you want. It reads the email rather than matching a keyword, so a newsletter with the word pricing in it stays quiet. Gmail and Calendar are the sources, and both work fully on iPhone.

Someone asking what you charge is deciding now. In our experience, when they have written to three freelancers, the one who answers first is usually the one who gets the call back.

4. A call ten minutes before a client meeting

Calendar watches work fully on iPhone, and this one reads Google Calendar, including events someone added this morning. Ten minutes before a client meeting your phone rings, and OLL.E has summarised it: who is coming, what the invite says, the last email about it. It also tells you when a meeting moves or is cancelled. You type "Call me 10 minutes before any client meeting." Outlook and Apple Calendar are not live yet.

Calendar's own reminder is a banner, and a banner on a phone face down on the desk is nothing. A call gets you in with the thread fresh instead of hunting for the link while the client watches you join late.

Should I answer clients at night?

No, with one exception, and the exception is why watch two exists.

Tell every new client your hours once, in the kickoff message, and keep them. A client in another time zone is not testing you at 2am; it is 10am where they are, and most of what they send can wait for your 8am. The holding reply does the answering, and you decide, half awake, whether this is the rare one that cannot wait. In our experience it almost never is. If you are getting up most nights, the watch is too wide. Narrow it to two clients, or to messages that mention a deadline.

How do I stop missing client messages?

Stop trying to hear all of them. Read them on a schedule instead, three times a day, starting when you sit down and ending before you stop, and let the four watches cover the hours in between.

The Shortlist can make those reads tidier, but only once you are on Pro. It is OLL.E's silent list: it never rings or buzzes, and it holds what a watch sends there and nothing else, so it won't gather your other messages on its own. On Free the four ringing watches use every slot, which means nothing feeds it. On Pro ($19.99 a month, 25 watches) a fifth watch such as "Shortlist any email from a current client, and label it Clients" gives you one quiet list of client email to go through at those set times. It reads Gmail, so it works fully on iPhone. Everything else from clients still lives in the apps it came from, and you read it there.

More on the switching-off side in how to stop checking your phone without missing clients, and on the other tools worth keeping in best apps for freelancers.

For a freelancer starting out, OLL.E comes down to four typed sentences and a phone that rings only for them. Each watch gets a phone call, an alarm or the silent Shortlist, plus one action such as drafting the bid. Free covers four active watches and 10 alerts a month with no card; Pro is $19.99 a month for 25 watches and 300 alerts, with a 7-day trial. Upwork, Gmail and Calendar watches work fully on iPhone. Watching other apps' messages there needs the PinG keyring, an add-on you buy once, and replies are drafts you confirm.