About once a year, I like to take a step back from the news cycle and write about a different kind of platform: productivity tools that use artificial intelligence and other innovations to help people get their work done more efficiently.
One year ago this week, I was here Why note-taking apps don't make us smarterIn short, it took us too long to learn that software cannot automate thinking. But I think software can automate thinking. conditions Improve your thinking: To make new connections between ideas, to reduce the number of times your attention shifts from app to app throughout the day, and to organize your reading to make it more useful in the future.
With that in mind, here are three apps I've started using since I last wrote on the subject, plus some free alternatives for those looking for cheaper alternatives.
App: capacity.
Key insights: Don't take notes— make Note.
Lesson learned: A funny but expected consequence of writing last year that note-taking apps aren't going to make you smarter was that I got a bunch of responses from readers saying they completely agreed, but that I should also try another note-taking app that I'd recently discovered.
As a productivity nerd degenerate, I have dutifully tried out most of the apps you recommended, and I've fallen in love with Capacities, a “personal knowledge management” app in the same type of journaling and note-taking tools I've tried over the years, like Roam, Obsidian, and Mem.
Like most productivity apps I use, a lot of the reasons I like Capacities are simply aesthetic: I love the big, blank canvas, the tagging and linking features, and the integrated AI assistant that helps me explore new topics and add what I learn to the notes I take there.
Instead of a one-size-fits-all note, Capacities lets you create many different types of objects, each with its own metadata and tabs for reference and organization (Daily Notes, People, Books, etc. are some of the objects). I've used it to create pages for important people in my life with various reference data like birthdays, family names, etc. I've also created pages dedicated to the companies I represent, which I keep up to date with organizational charts, important dates, and other information.
But where Capacities really shined for me this year was in improving my workflow. In the nearly seven years since I started writing newsletters, I've found plenty of ways to store links and embellish them with different forms of metadata. (For example, in Notion, where I store all the links I put into this newsletter, the app's AI capabilities now add tags and summaries to each link in its database.)
Previously, I believed that if I stored all these links in a hardened database, it would magically give me new insights into the topics I was writing about. But after years of scratching my head, I realized that to get new insights from these links, I needed a new approach.
That's what I Zettelkastena technique for creating a web of thoughts through more active note-taking. Now, instead of just creating standalone notes for each individual link or story, I also create notes that organize my thoughts around each individual narrative.
At any given time, each reporter is tracking dozens of big ideas in their field. Platform This year, those ideas include:
- Google is accelerating the decline of the open web
- General artificial intelligence could become a reality within the next decade
- OpenAI is a strange company
Now, most days, I balance reading the morning news with taking notes. If I see an article about a breakthrough in AI, I add it to a note (or “zettel”) labeled “AGI could happen within the next decade.” I might also add a few lines of analysis at the top of the note to reflect where we are today.
Some of these notes will become columns. Others will be useful resources when I return to a topic I've been away from for months. But in each case, they represent an effort to map out my current thinking, support (or refute) it with new evidence, and produce raw material for my reports, analyses, and podcasts.
This particular version of Zettelkasten is likely to be most useful for people who work with ideas: writers, students, academics, communications executives, etc. But most knowledge workers keep track of some ideas over time, and in that respect, this approach seems better than simply taking an endless string of disposable notes with blank titles and relying on your brain to remember it all for you.
I don't want to overstate the power of this approach — I'm not sure it has yet produced any amazing insights or scoops for me — but it has made me feel a bit more in control of my field and given me a happy sense that my expertise in a particular area is growing over time.
This is basically everything I wanted from the note-taking process, and I'm excited to continue exploring this over the next year.
Free options: Capacity is Generosity Free tier. obsidianis even more generous.
App: Raycast.
Key Insights: Search without leaving the current tab.
Raycast is a launcher app for Mac that will be familiar to users of Spotlight, macOS's system-level search feature, as well as more complex apps like Alfred and Quicksilver that have sought to replace it over the years.
To use it, you type in a universal hotkey, such as ⌘+Space, and the Raycast launcher will appear on your screen. From there, you can perform an amazing variety of tasks without ever taking your fingers off the keyboard. Some of the things I use Raycast for on a daily basis include launching apps, searching for files, resizing windows, and controlling Spotify.
But my favorite way to use Raycast is for less important web searches while still staying focused on the task at hand. If you're watching a YouTube video and want to ask a question about something the creator said, want to know the definition of a word, or look up a bit of trivia, now you can do that with just a few keystrokes. Raycast's paid add-ons give you access to the latest AI models from Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mistral, depending on your preference.
And like any chatbot, you can ask follow-up questions to responses, all without leaving your browser tab. This cuts down on context switching during the day and makes it less likely you'll get distracted and forget what you were working on. This points to a future where web search is integrated into the tools you use to get work done.
This future feels like a vast improvement over my old workflow of opening a new browser tab, doing a Google search, clicking a link, and finding the information there (which was much more beneficial for the people who built the web). My mixed feelings about this last year.
Of course, a generative AI search engine is hallucinatory, so it can't be used for the kind of fact-checking I do for this column, but most of my searches aren't that important, and the Raycast handles those very well.
Shipping options: If you want to use generative AI for more searches and avoid opening a new browser tab each time, There are rate limits, but the free ChatGPT app has you covered.
Apps: Leadwise.
insight: Generative AI can produce better librarians.
As a reporter, some of the document problems I regularly encounter include:
- The court's decision is 300 pages long, but I only have two hours left to write about it.
- This scientific paper is about a field beyond my understanding, so I would like to understand the gist of it before interviewing the author.
- I think there was a paper on this last year, but I can't remember what it was.
- I know there was a paper on this last year but I can't find it.
Readwise has been a great help in solving these and other problems: these days, when a big ruling comes up, I download the PDF, throw it into Readwise, and use the app's AI-powered “ghost reader” feature to ask questions.
Ultimately, you'll need to read all the relevant parts yourself. But Ghostreader is super handy in suggesting where to start reading. And if you're looking for something specific in a document, you can ask Ghostreader to search for it. Then, if that article or PDF becomes important again a few months later, you can easily find it using Readwise's search feature.
Readwise aims to save just about anything you can read or watch: articles, emails, videos, and even full-length books. It has a built-in RSS reader, and I try to spend more time browsing these feeds than the random algorithmic recommendations on Threads.
I would like to add that apps that just keep adding stuff you don't read aren't very useful.Gathering materials feels more beneficial than usual” writes Andy Matuschak, an expert note-taker.
But if you've ever wished you had a guide to help you quickly understand a big piece of content or find something you only half-remembered, Readwise is a great solution, and I think it has really increased my productivity.
Shipping options: Google NotebookLM Experiment You can save multiple PDFs in a virtual notebook and ask questions together. Claude and other chatbots as well, but they don’t have the powerful organizational features of Readwise.
“To become a better thinker, I need to invest more time and attention into wrestling with what I find,” I wrote here last year. While generative AI developers have often overpromised over the past year, the apps above all acted as great wrestling coaches. And if these apps lead to a real breakthrough for me, I'll share them with you here next year.
Bonus Recommendations: I first learned about Raycast and Readwise David Pierce's excellent (and free) Installer Newsletterthis is one of my favorite books that I read every week.
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