As a freelancer I always had to manage my own projects. Keeping track of work and time is important to make sure that I can deliver work on time and within budget.
Jira, Trello and all of these platforms were already familiar to me. I have worked with them for years when I worked at Hanos, but I never use them for my own projects. Those tools are too big for the projects I work on and I don't want to expose my clients to that learning curve.
When I worked on ArtEZ Press (start in 2019), I had to find a way to keep track of work and communicate it to the client. That's when I started using Notion's databases as an issue tracker and for logging work I used Apple Notes.
It became a steady workflow for me and my clients. Each time I returned to the project after a few days or weeks I felt grateful that all the work was documented there by myself and the client. Sometimes they had left a new ticket with a bug they found. It was easy to pick up where I left off.
I used to have a lot of different databases and pages. I simplified it to just one database and one page. I also simplified my task management system. I used to have a lot of different projects and boards. I simplified it to just one board.