Yesterday a friend told me,
“you always have the coolest tool recommendations. How do you find out about this stuff??”
The short answer is that, it has been my job for years: helping people curate their technical stacks. Part of that role means knowing what’s available, what works for folks, and what’s just another shiny object. The more I know about tools, integrations, and possibilities, the more value I am able to provide for my clients.
I love how technology can reduce hours of painstakingly boring activity for my clients (and me!). The look on their faces when they realize that something they spend hours doing every week can be automated with Zapier or other tools? *Chef’s kiss*
I’ve been working online and experimenting with tools for so long that sometimes I forget how long it has taken me to curate my technical stack and find my go-to tools.
So I thought I would share some of the tech+tools I rely on every day in my life and business, and some of the tools I’m still experimenting with:
This is not an exhaustive list, but wanted to highlight some of the most essential ones!
My technical stack:
Notion
It has replaced Asana, Evernote, google docs, and paper planners. I use it every single day, and it is helping me become a more creative and effective person. Nothing else has ever even come close! I’ve moved ALL my clients over to Notion. (And if you’re looking for Notion templates, I have a few recommendations.)
[For full disclosure, I’m a Notion Partner, so when you sign up with my link, you also help support me and my content!]
Kindle + Readwise (+ new Airr.io)
Readwise is a tool that pulls together all of your highlights from Kindle, Medium, Instapaper, Tweets, etc, and integrates with Notion. Being able to read books on kindle and easily store those highlights for later within Notion has become such an essential part of my daily workflow.
Tiago Forte wrote about the power of summarization recently in his blog post, The Ultimate Guide to Summarizing Books:
“In 2016, I read 57 books. I read like I was running out of time. It felt like an achievement, yet by the end of the year, I could scarcely recall even one useful idea from each book. That moment was a turning point. I realized very little of the information I was consuming was sticking.”
— Tiago Forte
Highlighting is just the beginning, but it’s an essential piece of helping distill core ideas. The hard part is making the time to do the summarization! But if you’re going to invest that much time into reading, it’s worth doing the work to summarize the ideas in your own words so you actually retain some of that learning!
Airr.io also now integrates with Readwise, which means you can now save transcripts and notes about your podcasts as you’re listening to them! I’m still experimenting with this, but it’s pretty exciting!
It also generates pretty graphics based on your highlights:
Marco Polo
I am honestly surprised at this one, but it has quickly become one of my favourite apps. I use it to leave video messages for friends and business colleagues. I have mastermind MP groups where we share our wins, friends who share their garden tours, and the ability to see family’s silly faces. It’s kind of like Slack messages with Video: watch the videos when you have a moment, react in real time with emojis, or respond later when you have a moment.
I have rekindled so many friendships through Marco Polo. I’ve used it to share my workspace + audio/visual setup with friends, give insights, or simply lend a listening ear. My assistant also lets me share my rambles via Marco Polo, as sometimes it’s easier to share a quick video thought than to type something out.
Textexpander
I’ve been using Textexpander for almost a decade, and it’s one of the first things I install on a new computer. (I believe Alfred has a lot of the same functionality – I’m just so used to Textexpander!) Textexpander auto-expands text with a few keystrokes. I never type my email addresses, home address, calendar booking links, my website URLS, lorem ipsum, and even some html. Anything that you type over and over and over again on the daily should be a snippet that gets auto-expanded.
hey.com
I used Airmail for many years, then tried Superhuman for a few months… but since I tried hey.com I haven’t looked back. There are some limitations (you can’t send from your business emails–yet), but so far, the pros far outweigh the cons. The email stress that has been reduced as a result of using hey has been well worth the $99/yr. Colour me impressed.
Loom
Loom is video recording software that lets you quickly record your screen and share a link with others. It’s been amazingly useful for helping clarify how to do things in Notion, create standard operating procedures for clients, and for onboarding/training new team members. It also embeds really nicely inside your Notion docs!
1password
1password is another must-have tool that I install as soon as I set up a new computer. I consider this an ESSENTIAL tool (or any password manager, really). If you are still typing out passwords or trying to remember where you saved them, please do yourself a favour and install a password manager. Please. Pretty please. You will thank me later! This is also how I share passwords with team members without sharing them in plain text. Security is sexy.
BusyCal
I freakin’ love BusyCal. I was skeptical at first. $50 for a CALENDAR app?? But honestly, there were so many little things I wanted to be able to do with my calendar that made it worth it. I look at my calendar every day, many times throughout the day. I want it to be functional AND visually appealing.
Mostly I love the colour coding, and the ability to tag events in your calendar. For example, I have green Deep Work blocks in my calendar, while booked meetings show up as purple. Recurring Masterminds show up as a different shade of purple. Same calendar, different colours. Anything tagged with physical activity turns yellow. Anything tagged Deep Work becomes green. The colour coding helps me be more aware of my energy and commitments.
Look at the difference between BusyCal (left) and Google Calendar on the right:
The design and feel of my apps matters big-time to me, and Google just doesn’t cut it :-/
There are tons of little features that just make it way more pleasurable to use.
And a new contender…
Mmhmm
Mmhmm is a new screensharing + presentation tool that’s as easy to use as Photo Booth. Here’s me testing out the green screen with a Notion screenshare:
It’s only available on Mac at the moment. It’s pretty neat! I’ll do a more in depth behind the scenes to share how it works and what my setup looks like.
Now over to you:
What tools are in your toolkit?
Curious if you have any little-known tools that make a big difference in your day to day. Reply to this email and let me know!
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