Nika

Founders, makers or marketers. What tools do you use for your work and daily operations?

What tools make your work processes smooth while keeping you sane?

[Solutions for maintaining health are also welcome since your work results depend on your well-being and energy management.] 🙂

I am a marketer, and here are my go-to apps/tools:

TASK MANAGEMENT:

  • Apple Reminders

  • Jira

  • Trello

GRAPHIC DESIGN:

  • Figma

  • Photopea

VIDEO:

  • CapCut

  • DaVinciResolve

COPYWRITING/SCHEDULING:

  • (old-school) Google Docs

  • EditPad

  • Grammarly

  • ChatGPT

  • Notion

COMMUNICATION/NEWSLETTERS:

  • Gmail

  • Slack

  • Discord

  • Social media (LI, X)

  • Crisp

  • Substack

  • Mailchimp

PSYCHOHYGIENE FOR MAINTAINING MY HEALTH:

  • YouTube (videos for exercising, literally every day)

  • Apple Health

I am looking forward to your "tool swaps."

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Malith Gamage

I am a maker working on zapdigits.com and these are mine:

Task Manager:

  • Notion

  • Linear

Design:

  • My girlfriend (UX designer)

Development:

  • Cursor

  • Github

  • Inngest (Background jobs)

Communication:

  • Brevo (API)

  • Slack

  • Gmail

  • Medium

  • LinkedIn

  • X

Additionally started using:

  • Attio

  • Videco.io

Ambika Vaish
Launching soon!

@malithmcrdev â€śDesign: My girlfriend (UX designer)” -elite use of human-centred design!

Nika

@malithmcrdev My girlfriend :D I love how you optimised your workflow by using other people and delegating :D Didn't know about Attio. I will have a look at it.

Angelina Shevchuk

Not to repeat what was said, I'd love to feature Hotjar. I am a marketer and I use it to watch the recordings of users' activity on our product's website. It also shows heatmaps and other cool things.

Recently discovered it!

Nika

@angelinashv OOoooooh, I haven't been using it for ages but I remember how fascinated I was when I tracked the behaviour of visitors :D

MubashirullahD
Launching soon!

For marketing specific:

I use Claude for copy and writing prompts. I use those prompts to create illustrations on Sora to use in posts or even ads.

Last week I made a LinkedIn carousel post. All the images were made in Sora, I attached them to google slides and printed them as pdf.

I also used Xnapper for screenshots on my Mac. It adds this nice padding and background and has defined aspect ratios for the different platforms. It's a convenience thing and the app was on discount on Appsumo I bought it. (It can be tried for free, it just ads this tiny watermark. I'm not affiliated with them.) I realised screenshots were a headache when I tried taking one on my website's testimonial.


Recently I also setup Camo Studio. This let me use my S24 Ultra as a camera on my Mac. Any application on my Mac, whether it's Zoom or Google Meet. I set it up for recording with Screen Studio. This is an app I will use to shoot my demo etc.

Do you guys think I should try something else out? What was the traditional way of making illustrations? Prefer free apps but definitely will consider paying if it solves a big enough pain.

Nika

@mubashirullahd It managed that graphic design quite well :) Regarding recording – I use OBS, but is more for livestreams :)

MubashirullahD
Launching soon!

@busmark_w_nika OBS is decent. I use to stream on Twitch with it. Screen Studio adds this nice zoom in animation. I can just focus on the work instead of the technical stuff.

Nika

@mubashirullahd I didn't know you livestream as well! :D Your twitch? :)

MubashirullahD
Launching soon!

@busmark_w_nika a lot of people tried streaming in the pandemic. It was really fun. I just didn't have the energy to continue while working in a startup. My viewer could tell I was sleepy XD.

I haven't streamed in years.

Nika

@mubashirullahd It managed that graphic design quite well :) Regarding recording – I use OBS, but is more for livestreams :)

Lou Rossi

Photopea! I used that back in my old game design days, it was free and awesome to use. I haven't heard about that app in a while and am happy it's still alive!

Nika

@yakuraapp It is still free, but they have made stricter conditions and push people to purchase it. (subscription $5/month) or donor.

Rodrigo Soviero
Slack keeps me sane because it allows me to be out of WhatsApp. Notion doesn’t quite make me sane, but rather gives me the illusion of sanity, it provides me the illusion of the mental organization I’ll probably never achieve (still worth it). (Fun thing with Notion, once a week I’ll nuke all my pages, reset everything, clean slate. Hmmm the freshness) ChatGPT and Claude make me sane up until the moment I’ve squeezed every last token out of them. Then they go economic mode and start giving me half written responses (I’m sure this is a real thing). Then they make me pissed and I open up Grok just to make scene. I pretend to use it for 3 prompts, and then I remember I own a second ChatGPT account (that I have for my team). I move there and continue my work at the future expense of theirs (call it token-debt). Gmail makes me think I have to be sick in the head or something. How can we as a society be talking about “AGI” when everyday im sorting through hundreds of trash mail in my inbox, hoping that I won’t get lost in a streak of archiving madness and end up hit something important by accident. And even after all that, when my inbox is finally clean and clear, for some twisted reason I still go on to check the spam mail? What’s wrong with me? There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t ask Gemini to deal with the chaos that is my inbox and it always says the same thing. It cant. I mean… how? why? I mean you’re Google ffs. You dont need access to my inbox, YOU ARE my inbox. Still, everyday the same 20% off “offer to try Gemini”. I don’t care what benchmarks say, if you can’t sort my email I don’t trust you.
Nika

@rodrigo_soviero Funny thing "Slack keeps me sane" :D In many founders, Slack drives them crazy :D

Jean Willame

Hey @busmark_w_nika thanks for the topic! As a Produc and after trying so many productivity hacks, I finally found that the simplest tool that actually works to get your sh*t done is the most useful ahah. My day-to-day workflow centers on Linear for general products organization, Notion for documentation (combined with ProcessFlow, I'm biased since I built it I guess :D ), Google Calendar for organizing my day before starting, and then Claude as my main colleague! And of course Youtube with some lofi or drum and bass to go on a deep focus mode