Tools I Use, 2025

Hey.com is my email service of choice. I still use Gmail for our organizational email, but my justinlong@gmail email address got so clogged with emails (spam, mis-directed email, what have you) that I ended up archiving it and moving to Hey. The thing I love about Hey is that all incoming email gets “pre-screened”: I have to choose to accept email from a certain person or organization. This automatically eliminates all spam. It has a number of other features that I enjoy, but that was the single biggest selling point. I don’t see any email from any individual or organization I haven’t pre-approved.

Email newsletters. I follow a lot of email newsletters. This is helpful because these come on a regular basis and are storable.

Dropbox: I have a Dropbox Pro account with a terabyte of space organized around the PARA method, which I’ve found to be indispensable.

Obsidian: My Zettlekasten (database of notes) is now stored exclusively in Markdown files in an iCloud folder (so it syncs to my phone–I would prefer Dropbox but then I lose phone access). I use Obsidian to access those files–it automatically manages all the links between notes.

Apple Photos and Google Photos: I store photos in my phone in Apple Photos. I used to back these up to Google Photos, but no longer–they’re exclusively in the Apple Photos cloud.

Feedly intrigued me with its AI system for training articles. You can tag a set of 20 or more articles into a news board, and then tell Feedly to bring you articles from all your sources that are similar to the ones you’ve tagged. But eventually, the AI wasn’t working nearly as well. I dropped my pro account, but I still use it to review RSS feeds.

Matter. This is where I store articles that lets me read and highlight and tag articles, but I’m using it less and less in favor of storing directly in my Zettle if it’s meaningful. I may drop this in the long run, but it’s also a good place to store things for casual reading (like on planes, etc).

Mailchimp has been my email newsletter manager of choice. I’ve tried other services and always come back to Mailchimp.

Google Meet is what I use for nearly all online meetings. (I’m also able to use Zoom if someone needs to.)

Kindle: I love Amazon Kindle. I have hundreds of books/files in it. I use my Kindle App on iPhone/iPad far more than I do my actual Kindle, at this point. In 2020⁄2021, I’ve been using the Kindle to get samples and buying books in paper form, because I get less distracted (no notifications in a paper book).

Tripit maintains my travel calendar automatically. Anytime I purchase a flight, Tripit (which monitors my Gmail account) automatically sucks the flight data in and gives me a nice itinerary. It syncs to the iPhone/iPad app as well, so that’s always up to date, and shares the itinerary with my wife, so she has quick access to my schedule.

Brain.fm—instrumentals, for when I need background music (they are all created instrumentals, not anything with words that would distract me). I used to use Spotify but I rarely do these days. We have a family account, and our family uses it all the time.

Apple’s Keychain. I used to use Lastpass, but since I became a Mac-only user, I use the one built in to Apple products.

Safari/Chrome. I’m pretty browser agnostic these days, but since I’m a Mac user, I tend to use Safari most.

No Social Media. After years on Twitter, I have largely abandoned it–with the exception of one list that follows weather forecasters in the case of severe weather–and with it all social media. There’s just not enough return for the time spent on it. I maintain a list of weather trackers for times when tornadoes are nearby. I’m in Twitter maybe once or twice a year, and never in anything else.

Adobe Indesign–dropped. Our organization has a guy who has a subscription and does a lot of our design work, and I’m not using this now.

AWS Lightsail—dropped. this was a cheap and reliable and completely customizable place to store databases, but we’ve dropped that in favor of Google Sheets.

Pinboard.in—dropping. I still use this, occasionally, just to bookmark URLs temporarily. But every Roundup is stored in my Zettlekasten and individual entries are linked to topical files that give ongoing context, so I use bookmarking far less in the long run. I’ll probably drop my Pinboard account this year.