I Tried 200 Productivity Tools, These Are The Best

Fifteen years of testing an enormous array of productivity apps, tools, and tech culminates in a distilled set of best picks. The aim is to spare time and money otherwise lost to trial-and-error. The focus is on the best apps, tools, and tech surfaced by this experience. Each selection is grounded in extensive hands-on use.

Mornings start with a Withings Wi‑Fi scale weigh‑in that syncs to Apple HealthKit, making weight a trackable metric; what gets measured gets managed. A cup of filter coffee brewed in a Clever Dripper follows. Then come longhand Morning Pages from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing, sometimes four when on a roll. This clears mental clutter and surfaces ideas for business and life, affirming that amid apps and tech, a pen-and-paper notebook remains a favorite productivity tool.

Start each morning with a five-minute pass through Things 3, guided by a simple two-list approach: Today for what must happen now and Anytime as the endless backlog. Calendar and Things widgets place scheduled events alongside the Today list, making priorities and time constraints clear at a glance. When motivation or clarity is needed, pull a few items from the Anytime list into Today, skipping “This Week” or “This Month” buckets to keep the system simple. Use repeating tasks that resurface a set interval after completion—like a call that reappears two days later—to automate routine commitments.

Skip mythical long‑term plans and focus on what needs doing today, using mornings for either writing or filming. For writing, head to a local coffee shop or restaurant; switching locations—practiced since medical school—turns work into play. Keep a compact sling pre‑packed with a journal, an 11‑inch iPad Pro, a pen, and sometimes a camera, while a larger laptop bag holds the heavier setup. This grab‑and‑go system reduces friction and makes it easy to step out to coffee shops or parks to get work done.

First-Draft Writing in Ulysses with a 1,000-Word Daily Target Changing locations like a local coffee shop keeps the writing habit easy to maintain. Ulysses on iPad provides a simple markdown workspace for first drafts of newsletters, book projects, and video plans. Drafts then move to Notion for videos, Google Docs for books, or an email editor for newsletters. A daily 1,000-word target in Ulysses tracks progress and reinforces consistency.

Therapy, Ambient Focus, and a Notion-Driven Workflow Therapy becomes a key productivity tool, helping unpack emotions and limiting beliefs that hinder work and life. BetterHelp provides this online with a network of over 30,000 credentialed therapists, matching via a short questionnaire, flexible phone/video/text sessions, messaging anytime, easy therapist switching, and a 10% first-month discount via the provided link. At the desk, full-screen ambient YouTube music on a second monitor sustains focus. Email triage runs in Superhuman with keyboard shortcuts for speed, while Morning Brew delivers daily tech, business, and finance updates and Readwise resurfaces five highlights each morning from past notes. Notion powers all video and course writing and the wider company workflow, from content calendars with titles and thumbnails to annual objectives and key results via OKRs, with project quests organized into five-week sprints.

A dual standing-desk setup anchors daily work, with a treadmill proving one of the most useful additions in the past six months—used 144 times across 65 days to cover 235 km, often while working or gaming. Workflows shift between Windows and Mac by moving a mechanical keyboard between machines, alongside ongoing testing and a custom build. Automatic, cross-platform time tracking with the app rice has run since November 2021, logging active apps and tabs and surfacing 183 hours writing, 87 documenting, 76 in meetings, and 183 in Google Docs, much of it spent editing a book. Satisfaction with rice led to an angel investment, and the treadmill-under-desk setup earns a strong recommendation.

Daily writing transitions into filming through a low‑friction setup: three cameras (main, overhead, and a shorts camera) feed via HDMI into an ATEM Mini Pro for seamless angle switching in recordings, live sessions, and Zoom calls. Audio is captured by a Sennheiser MK416 positioned just out of frame, with an Elgato Wave 3 on a low‑profile arm for podcasts, videos, and calls. Desk organization with Ugmonk Gather 2.0 adds a monitor stand, phone charging dock, and magnetized Post‑it accessories, freeing space so the Mac Mini sits underneath. The Mac Mini connects through a CalDigit TS3 Thunderbolt dock to drive dual displays, and all footage is uploaded to Google Drive under Google Workspace, using 75 TB of the team’s 115 TB shared storage.

Instead of scrolling Twitter or Instagram on the toilet, save articles to Readwise’s Reader and use those moments for focused reading. Reader, an RSS feed aggregator built by the makers of Readwise, lets you queue articles and read them all in one go. Double-click to highlight; those highlights sync to Readwise and then to Notion for automatic saving.

Calendar Blocks, Walking Sparks, and Instant Idea Capture After writing and filming, the day runs off calendar blocks for creative work and team check-ins, then shifts into a recharging walk that reliably triggers strong ideas. Each idea gets captured instantly in an Apple Notes inbox on the iPhone and later gets processed into Notion, Ulysses documents, or task lists. Walks are usually silent, but sometimes bring podcasts or Audible audiobooks; notes from The Greatness Mindset are slated for a book‑club video. Feel Good Productivity is also being recorded for Audible at penguin Studios, with pre‑order bonuses available on its website.

Voice Transcription and Async Video to Replace Meetings For hands‑free thinking on the move, Otto (auto.ai) records with a quick widget tap, transcribes conversations with high accuracy, and auto‑summarizes—perfect for dictating video ideas while walking. The broader workflow runs on Notion and Slack for day‑to‑day communication, with a separate deep‑dive video covering the 12 core apps. Loom replaces many meetings: teammates share screen‑recorded updates everyone can watch at double speed. A recent financial update arrived as a Loom played at 2.5x, delivering everything without scheduling a meeting and saving significant time.

On workout days, about an hour goes to the gym, tracked with a Trainerize-based app that supports structured workouts and progress photos. A remote fitness coach programs a body recomposition plan with sessions: body recomp A, leg day (B), and chest-focused (C). For training independently, the Strong app enables building custom workouts or adding exercises during the session. Strong shows previous performance so progressive overload is easy to apply by increasing the weight.

Achieve progressive overload simply by increasing reps. Evenings often end with a meal with friends or business associates; walking boosts step count, or Uber/train fills the gap, and transit time becomes dedicated iPad journaling in Day One, used since 2016 to capture thoughts, feelings, and business and life ideas. Bedtime wind-down cues include an Amazon Echo playing relaxing yoga and meditation music and occasional stretches for tight hips, hamstrings, and neck, with a Lululemon yoga mat kept out to reduce friction. The night closes by setting an alarm and reading on a Kindle, with a separate deep-dive video covering the 12 apps that power a multi-million-dollar business.