Tools I Use to Be Productive

december 12, 2025

The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it.

Every tool here solves a problem I have—not a hypothetical problem, not a problem I'd have if I reorganized my workflow. A real problem.

The best tools disappear. You stop noticing them. Everything else is noise.

This is a living document. The date above reflects the last update.

Notes & Tasks

Capacities handles both. I arrived here after years of searching: Apple Notes → Notion → Obsidian → Capacities.

Capacities takes an object-oriented approach. Instead of treating every note as a blank page, I define types with structured fields. A "Book" has author, year, and status. A "Project" has deadline, priority, and related notes. Each type enforces its schema, so I filter and sort without tagging discipline. Notion and Obsidian can do this, but you build and maintain the structure yourself. Capacities makes structure first-class.

Capacities recently added native task management, which let me drop a separate task app. One tool beats two—not because consolidation is inherently good, but because my notes and tasks are tightly coupled.

Writing & Documentation

Google Docs, Sheets, Slides

For anything shared externally. Not because they're best, but because they're universal. When collaborating, the other person's tool preferences matter more than yours. Path of least resistance. Fighting over tools wastes energy that should go toward the work.

Notion

For internal company documentation. The database features work well for knowledge management at scale—wikis, project trackers, linked meeting notes. Overkill for personal use, but at work the structure pays off because everyone already has access.

Calendar & Communication

Notion Calendar

Syncs with Google Calendar, cleaner interface. That's it.

Gmail

I've tried everything else. Gmail with keyboard shortcuts enabled is as fast as Superhuman, without the subscription.

Development

iTerm2

Terminal. Stable and fast.

Neovim + Droid

Code editing. Neovim is fast and customizable. Droid gives me AI assistance without leaving the terminal. This setup took time to configure. But I spend hours in the editor daily—small improvements compound.

Linear

Project management for nimble teams. Linear has killed Jira, Asana, and the rest for teams that value speed. Simple and very good.

Utilities

Raycast consolidates clipboard history, window management, shortcuts, and quick calculations into a single launcher. Worth every penny. Before Raycast: Amethyst for window tiling, Spotlight for navigation, no clipboard manager, no shortcut manager. Raycast replaced and improved on all of it.

AI

Claude

Conversational AI for thinking through problems, getting feedback, brainstorming. The key is iterative dialogue—going back and forth, correcting misunderstandings, building on previous responses.

Perplexity

Research and fact-checking. When I need to verify something or synthesize multiple sources, it's faster than switching between search tabs.

Hardware

13" MacBook Pro

Personal use. Portable enough to carry everywhere.

15" MacBook Pro

Work. The extra screen real estate matters when I'm in code all day.

iPhone 17 Air

I abhor my phone for anything other than calendar, email, messaging, and calls. The less I use it, the better.

What I Don't Use

These tools didn't make the cut. The reason matters more than the tools themselves.

Motion "automatically schedules your tasks based on your energy levels." I already know when I work best. What I need is a calendar that stays out of my way—not another layer of automation making decisions for me.

Dex is a "relationship intelligence platform" that organizes contacts and suggests who to reach out to. What slows me down is remembering details—solved by discipline or simple notes, not a platform.

The pattern: tools that add overhead while claiming to reduce it. They feel productive to configure. They don't solve anything.

The Cost

Every tool has costs: setup time, learning curve, integration overhead, mental load. People see the marketing demo and imagine the upside. They don't account for the hours spent configuring it and the features they'll never touch.

Before adopting any tool: What problem does this solve that I have right now?

If the answer requires reorganizing your workflow, the tool isn't solving your problem—it's creating one.

The reward for good work is more work.