Software is the cheap part. The expensive part is the hour a day you lose to friction: hunting for a file, retyping the same data, rebuilding a plan someone already changed. These are the tools I pay for out of my own pocket, grouped by the job they ...
Sections
5
Capture and organise the work
Plan the day and see where time goes
Automate the busywork
Write, record and transcribe
Protect your focus and your logins
Capture and organise the work
Everything I agree to goes in here within a minute of agreeing to it, so my head stops trying to be the list. I use it for the small stuff that never makes it onto a project board.
Todoist
The board I open when the work involves other people. A shared view of who has what saves me scrolling a chat thread to find the latest version.
monday.com
What I reach for once a project has phases, approvals and people waiting on each other. Heavier than a to-do app, and that is the point.
Wrike
Before work becomes tasks it is usually a mess on a wall, and this is where I keep that mess. I also use it for workshops where everyone needs to see the same thing.
Miro
Plan the day and see where time goes
It takes my task list and drops it into real calendar slots, then reshuffles when the day slips. Useful when you already know what to do and the hard part is when.
Motion
A week of honest time tracking is the cheapest audit of your calendar you will ever run. I do it a few times a year and it still surprises me.
Toggl
Automate the busywork
Where I start when two apps I already pay for should be talking to each other. Pick one handoff you do by hand every week and automate that one first.
Zapier
Email sequences keep running on the days I do not show up, which is the whole argument for owning a list instead of renting an audience.
Kit
Write, record and transcribe
The edit pass I skip when I am tired. Mostly it catches the sentence I rewrote three times and left broken.
Grammarly
Edit audio and video by editing the transcript. If you have ever hunted for a bad take on a waveform, you know why that matters.
Descript
Nobody at the table has to take notes, so the conversation gets everyone’s attention. I read the transcript afterwards and pull the actions out of it.
Otter.ai
Kills the noise behind you on a call. Cafés, airports, building work next door, and the other side hears none of it.
Krisp
Protect your focus and your logins
Mail, calendar and drive without an ad machine reading them. The reason to pay is client work going through your inbox.
Proton
For working from cafés, airports and hotel wifi without having to think about it.
NordVPN
One vault on every device, so you stop using your memory as a password manager and stop taking the password reset detour.
LastPass
For the one Windows app that would otherwise keep you working on the wrong machine.
