I am not a heavy tool user in terms of volume. But I am super efficient at the few niche tools I use.
By the end of this newsletter, I will introduce you to five tools that make my life easy as a marketer.
These are a crucial part of my business, and I even pay for some of them. But they have free versions if you want to take them for a ride.
If you follow me on Twitter/X, you see me posting my weekly review of where I spent my time.
At least three new people ask me what tool I use every week. At this point, I should pitch Rize for a sponsorship.
So anyway - here is the point.
I was not mindful of my time. I knew I was working hard, doing multiple projects, but I had no idea if I was efficient.
So I started time tracking with a Mac app called Daily. It was manual. You’ll have to enter the time stamps of your work (start and end time).
As I logged my activities manually, it helped me become mindful. I was more conscious about how and where I invested my time.
Now that the mindfulness problem is solved, I moved to Rize after six months to solve for automatic time tracking and focus.
Rize allows me to know how much time I spent on each project (Cogniton, Vikra’s Café, community, etc.), doing what (writing, research, admin, etc.)
Every Monday and at the end of each month, I review my time and see how I can work more while spending less time.
It’s a paid app. I am on the professional plan. The best use case of my friendship with Adithya is he recommends me the cooolest tools on Indie Deals.
It’s a speech-to-text app. It’s super accurate and takes voice commands. Meaning: When dicdating, you ask WisprFlow to take it down as bullet points, paragraphs, etc.
Most of my friends use it as a substitute for writing first drafts. But I am a ‘writing-first’ thinker.
I only use it for first drafts when I have scattered or a rush of thoughts. But these days, I am using WisprFlow to become a better speaker. I tend to repeat sentences while speaking, and I noticed I can cut down 20 seconds for every minute I speak.
So using a dictation app to be mindful of fluff and repetition is helping me currently.
Free version allows you to dictate 2000 words a week. I use the premium plan for unlimited words (Good freemium model. Once you get used to it, there’s no going back.)
This is a saviour if you work on multiple projects.
So I handle multiple clients and personal projects. I used Apple Notes or classic pen-paper for task management previously.
But I have always wanted all my tasks on one screen with the freedom to move them around. TickTick solves exactly that.
Ayush recommended this to me a while ago, and there’s no going back ever since.
This is how it looks (I can also have the next 7 days view):
Recently took this subscription because why not? Aravind and I have been using Midjourney for our design language on the coffee newsletter:
Imagine how much we would have paid a designer for these killer thumbnails if not for Midjourney.
It matches my taste, and I am always in awe of how beautiful Midjourney’s designs are. My current use case is for the thumbnails of my personal newsletter. Figuring out how I can use it in content creation or hobbies.
Man, Mindnode is such beautiful software.
There is no marketer who doesn’t use mind maps. Marketing involves hours of brainstorming, interconnecting, and a good mindmapping tool is a lifesaver.
I tried multiple platforms like Micro, TLDraw, etc., but they all were too complicated for me. I wanted a simple software with great UX/UI, and MindNode solved it for me.
Plus there are templates to choose from, a focus mode to focus on only one branch, and an outline view if you want to feed data to LLMs.
Free plan is generous. I pay a premium for INR 2500/year.
Apart from these, I use the usual ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude as my AI tools.
Projects and writing on Claude. Critical thinking on GPT. Research on Perplexity. One of my favourite prompts is “Explain [topics] in 10 bullet points or less.” Then I see where my curiosity takes me.
For notetaking, I use Obsidian, Notes, and Docs. Obsidian because it has a sexy second brain graphic + is great for writing. Apple Notes to write down ideas and first thoughts. I sometimes use Twitter/X as my first thesis dump.
Not a huge fan of Google Docs, but it’s easier to connect them to LLMs.
Goodbye, I guess? That’s my favourite tools for you. If you use any killer tools, email me pleaseee!
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