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I enjoy tools that are pieces of art in and of themselves. This page is inspired by Kevin Kelly's CoolTools site. Below is a continually updated list of tools I use in my personal and professional life that spark joy.

Everyday Productivity

  • Raycast - I use it ~100 times a day for so many things. It is the foundation of my efficiency on macOS.
  • Shottr - So many useful tools baked into one: ocr, scrolling screenshots, quick edits, etc.
  • Linear Mouse - Increase cursor movement than highest speed on Macos. My pointer speed is 0.13, do not go to the max speed as it will be extremely hard to reset it!
  • Notion Calendar - Good design. I preferred when it was named Cron
  • Ice - Hide apps in the menu bar. Clean, modern design and actively maintained.
  • Bitwarden - Password autofill is so satifying. Simple and it just works.
  • Superwhisper - To send longer prompts to LLMs quickly, speech to text is so satisfying and this app is infinitely better than the normal dictation on macos and runs locally AKA free.
  • Comet - I don't even use it for the agent stuff really, it just feels so fast. Especially with cerebras powering perplexity's quick queries.

Developer Tools

  • Claude Code - Was all in on cursor for a quite a while but I don't enjoy feeling the push to try out max mode. Also sonnet 4 in cc is completely different from sonnet 4 in cursor.
  • Disk Inventory X - best way to visually manage storage on macos.

Ergonomics and Focus

Sites

  • Perplexity.ai - I use for quick queries.
  • Duckduckgo - answer engines haven't figured out how to do good image search yet so I go here. I love being able to watch videos here instead of getting sucked into wasting time on youtube.
  • AlternativeTo - anytime I need a software tool I go here.
  • Packhacker - Really great site to find travel gear.
  • Monkeytype - Best well-designed typing practice site.
  • Catalog Choice - Want to stop junk mail coming to your house? Here's how

Notetaking

  • Notion - My LifeOS. Also my todo list and personal project management tool. For team project management, I prefer Linear.
  • Obsidian - Local notetaking that makes a beautiful writing experience.
  • Pilot G-2 05 - I handwrite in my journal nightly and this pen makes it so satifying.

Clothing

  • Ibex - Sustainable lululemon that aligns with my interest in hiking and plastic-free clothing.
  • Ryker - plastic-free gym shorts were so incredibly hard to find. Now I use these for running, hiking, lifting, and even swimming.

Health

  • Colemak - I never learned to touchtype until college when my wrists started to hurt a lot due to ignorance concerning propr ergonomics. I chose colemak as my keyboard layout and enjoy it so much. Instead of looking at a diagram of where letters are, I just started completely fresh on monkeytype and looked at the screen and let muscle memory develop over time. After 2 years, I am floating around 84 wpm with 96% accuracy

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