My Ultimate Productivity System for 2023!

Over the last couple of years, I designed a productivity system by using apps and tools to make me 10x more productive.

The tools I'm using make me learn quicker, get more done, consume knowledge more efficiently and effectively, and overall just make me work more productively.

Rize

Rize is a smart time tracker that improves your focus and helps you build better work habits.

It’s Apple’s screen time on steroids!

It works like an automatic time tracker, and based on your own data, it can tell you on a daily or monthly basis what proportion of time you’re spending on various things. Like, for example, how much time you’re spending on building your product, doing emails, or stuff you should work on less.

It basically tells me exactly where my time is going.

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Notion Clipper

I’m the kind of person that saves every piece of content that I think is worth reading, researching, or in general, is something I think I might need in the future.

For quickly saving articles and other resources I come across, especially when I’m just surfing in between deep work, the Chrome extension Notion Clipper is very helpful.

Because of it, I can just quickly send all resources to my Notion. And, by using this method of saving stuff for later, I can force myself to not dive into it yet and be completely distracted from what I was doing or what I’m supposed to be doing.

I can finish work, and later on, all the things I want to take a look at, are here, safely stored, in my Notion:

Notion

Speaking of Notion, this is a tool that is indispensable to my productivity system because it’s basically my second brain!

It’s my project manager for my businesses, in which I work on all the marketing and product development, it’s also my bookshelf and my content planner, so in general, it’s just my all-in-one overview of everything I need to work on, and where I can just find all of my notes and documentation.

The best thing about it is that you can work with different templates. You can create a board view, a timeline view, or just plain and simple databases and lists.

We even use Notion as our internal wiki.

Highly recommend using Notion.

Pomofocus

Now, if you’re familiar with the Pomodoro technique, a technique I’m using myself on a regular basis because it really helps to get into a productive workflow, Pomofocus is a simple but awesome web tool for tracking Pomodoro sessions.

You can simply select your Pomodoro session and add tasks you need to work on.

What I love about this Pomodoro timer is that there are several customizations available such as the duration of your Pomodoro sessions and breaks, and you can also change sounds and colors.

Now, if you’re on Mac, I actually recommend downloading the BeFocused Mac App.

This is a really cool app that sits right here in your main menu bar. And you can quickly enable or disable the timer of your Pomodoro session by simply right clicking with your mouse.

You can also start a quick Pomodoro session for one specific task, or you can list all of your to-dos separately.

The app has all kinds of customizations, and it also syncs with your iPhone app, however you do need to purchase the license for a one-time fee of 6 dollars.

Pssst! Want to give Pomodor a try? Here's my free Notion Pomodoro Template (with a timer included!)

Blinkist

To consume new knowledge the fastest way possible I'm using an app called Blinkist.

With this app, you can read book summaries instead of the whole book itself.

Which is actually one of the greatest hacks I discovered for reading. By reading the summaries, you’ll actually learn the most important stuff from a book, without spending too much of your time reading all the fluff that’s often added to a book.

The great thing about Blinkist, it has an awesome app, but it also works on desktop in your browser.

Loom

A video is worth 1000 words!

That’s why I’m using an app called Loom all the time to share quick tutorials with customers, or give feedback about my videos to my editor. It’s a perfect way just to share a quick message visually.

For example, when I run into some issues within our software, I can just quickly record a Loom, and send it to my developers, and it’ll be fixed in no-time.

There’s a Mac app and a Chrome extension, which are both working very conveniently.

Simplify

I’ve been in a love-hate relationship with Gmail for a long time now. But, since I’m using Simplify, it has been nothing but love.

Simplify is an amazing Chrome extension that turns your cluttered Gmail into focus mode.

It’s actually created by a former Google and Gmail employee.

Now, with the help of this extension, I have a minimal version of Gmail, which immediately improves my focus, but on top of that, it has some neat features to make your Gmail even more pleasant.

For example, you can change the font face and size, you can group email by date, which is a very convenient way to have a nice overview actually, and you can use all kinds of shortcuts to make working in your Gmail even much more productive.

Buffer

Now, besides Buffer being a brilliant scheduler for social media, I do want to highlight their chrome extension specifically.

Buffer’s Chrome extension lets me quickly add new tweet ideas to my Twitter scheduler without interrupting my work. With the help of this Chrome extension, whenever a new idea for a tweet comes to mind, I simply open the buffer Chrome extension, craft the tweet, and hit ‘schedule’, and this way, I can just go back to work instead of being distracted by having to go to the actual app.

It just all happens right in front of me.

Llama Life

Llama Life is one of the best productivity tools I came across in 2022.

First of all, it lets you play focus sounds in the background while working on your tasks. Now how cool is that!

Second of all, you never ever felt as good when you complete a task with their amazing animation.

The app has a super nice overview of all the tasks you need to do today, and you can quickly add a new task or you can select pre-sets, such as your morning routine, which you can design based on your own routine, or you can pick a Pomodoro template and start working in blocks.

What's yours?

So, those were my favorite apps from my productivity system. Do let me know in the comments of my video what apps are indispensable to your productivity workflow.

Stay productive! 🫵