My favorite software programs, gadgets, and other recommendations.
I'm pretty nerdy by nature, neurodivergent, and have been into mindful productivity for years. I probably spent way too much time researching different tools and products to develop software, run my business, stay productive, or distract myself from procrastinating. So, I've compiled a list of all my favorite things, I'll keep adding and removing tools I use. Some of the links are afiliate links, which means if you end up buying a paid version, I might get a kickback at no extra cost to you.
Productivity
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Obsidian
Personal Knowledge Management
Probably the single most important tool for me. Open-source PKM software, available on all platforms. Think Notion, but more flexible, and totally free.
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AudioPen
Voicenotes on steroid
AudioPen takes your raw thoughts in the form of voice notes, transcribes and summarises them, in any way you want. This completely changed my workflow. Follow the tutorial below to link it to Obsidian.
Tutorial -
Make.com
No-code automation
I use Make.com for all kinds of no-code automation, you build "flows" visually by connecting different apps. For example I use it to sync survey responses from tally.so to my CRM in folk.app. It has a free plan, and a paid plan for more advanced use cases.
Marketing
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Folk.app
CRM
The only CRM I found that actually focused on people and relationships. Super flexible, works for business as well as for your network or personal contacts, even projects. Think kanban boards for everything. With a sprinkle of AI and Chrome plugins to connect to Gmail and LinkedIn.
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Kit.com
Email and Marketing platform
I probably tried too many email platforms. Kit is the sweet spot, generous free plan, fantastic extras. Includes digital product sales and a new 'app store' to integrate and automate with other tools.
AI things
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Claude.ai
Text-based LLM
Still probably the most useful, most human sounding and thinking LLM I've tried. They suffered a bit from their own popularity, the usage limits are a little low these days.
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AudioPen
Voicenotes on steroid
AudioPen takes your raw thoughts in the form of voice notes, transcribes and summarises them, in any way you want. This completely changed my workflow.
Tutorial -
Synthesia
AI-generated video avatars
Kinda creepy, and kinda awesome. Take a 2min video of yourself and generate your own personalised AI-avatar that speaks like you. Synthesia was one of very few platforms tested that gets privacy and has a good video quality. Used for a client project.
Developer Tools
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Arc
Browser
The Arc Browser is Chrome the way it should have been built. Vertical tabs, auto-closing to reduce clutter, organised in spaces. And yes, it's got a sprinkle of AI, if you want.
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Tailwind CSS
CSS Framework
A utility-first CSS framework packed with classes like flex, pt-4, text-center and rotate-90 that can be composed to build any design, directly in your markup.
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next.js
React-based web framework
Next.js has been one of my go-to tools for years now. File-based routing, and a grat ecosystem. Fairly intense breking changes between major versions, so it takes a little work to update old projects.
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Astrojs
Static Site Generator
Astro is built for static-first websites, very simple to get started with and it uses islands to only send the JS to the browser that's absolutely needed. Nice.
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VS Code
Code Editor
Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a source-code editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, and macOS