I Ranked Every Productivity Tool From Worst to Best
Ali Abdaal, a doctor turned entrepreneur, ranks 22 productivity tools he still uses from F to S tier. He judges each one by how much it actually moves him toward the goals he cares about.
The gist
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Abdaal puts Readwise, Opal, Zapier and Obsidian in D or F tier: he still uses them, but they barely move his own goals.
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Superhuman and Wispr Flow are C tier for him, since he types 156 and speaks 180 words per minute, though slower-typing teammates gain 4x.
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His Hermes Agent on Telegram, plus ChatGPT, Claude and Claude Code, are A tier, and he now uses AI mainly to stress test his thinking.
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His S tier is simple: handwritten journaling gave him the clarity to leave medicine, and running a timer roughly doubles his focus, he says.
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He calls time blocking in Google Calendar the most useful technique, and uses Notion and Notion AI to manage his whole team's projects.
Ali Abdaal uses it
"In the early days of my personal development journey, Readwise was very helpful because I was sort of revisiting the ideas that I was learning from productivity books... But at this stage in my life, it's very much a nice to have. I still use it every day. I still pay for it. ..."
▶ Play at 2:042 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown.
See all on the Readwise page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"Having an automatic app blocker on my phone that like when it hits 10 p.m. automatically blocks off access to Twitter, Reddit... For certain periods of my life, that was absolutely game-changing. But ever since having a baby... an app blocking thing like Opal has for me droppe..."
▶ Play at 4:36
Ali Abdaal uses it
"For certain members of my team, tools like Zapier are absolutely S tier. For example, for our operations team, we've got hundreds of zaps that save thousands of hours of human time every month."
▶ Play at 5:117 creators recommend it, including Corey Ganim, Chris Koerner, and Furqan Rydhan.
See all on the Zapier page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"These days, these agents are now so good that I actually haven't needed to open up my Obsidian Markdown files because I can just communicate with the files using my AI agents. That's what puts Obsidian squarely in the D tier for me. It's definitely a nice to have. I still have..."
▶ Play at 5:5612 creators recommend it, including Greg Isenberg, Hilary Gridley, and Imran Muthuvappa.
See all on the Obsidian page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"Superhuman Mail, which is the email app that I've been using since 2019... email is a necessary evil in my life. But using an app like Superhuman genuinely does make it a lot less painful. And so, that's why it goes in C tier."
▶ Play at 8:3210 creators recommend it, including Codie Sanchez, Frédéric Renken, and Jonathan Courtney.
See all on the Superhuman page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"This for me is now how mostly I talk to AI because I'm able to just hit the dictation key and Wispr Flow is able to transcribe everything that I say... for those team members, a tool like Wispr Flow is absolutely indispensable. But for me, I still use it every single day. I st..."
▶ Play at 9:2633 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown, This Week in Startups, and Jason Calacanis.
See all on the Wispr Flow page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"This is the icon for the Hermes agent, which is my personal favorite one these days... I started out with OpenClaw initially, and then I just found that OpenClaw required so much setup... when I discovered Hermes agent about probably six months ago, I've been using it pretty m..."
▶ Play at 14:0314 creators recommend it, including Peter Yang, Alex Finn, and Garry Tan.
See all on the Hermes Agent page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"Next up, we come to our favorite AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude and Perplexity. All of these I would put squarely in the A tier... So, my Hermes agent is powered by ChatGPT-6 Astra these days."
▶ Play at 17:31160 creators recommend it, including John Coogan, Riley Brown, and Peter Yang.
See all on the ChatGPT page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"These models, well, especially ChatGPT and Claude, are the ones that power the various different agents that I work with... When I do stuff with Claude Code in the terminal or on my computer, that is powered by Opus 5.5 these days."
▶ Play at 17:38250 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown, Chris Koerner, and This Week in Startups.
See all on the Claude page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"When I do stuff with Claude Code in the terminal or on my computer, that is powered by Opus 5.5 these days."
▶ Play at 17:46108 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown, Liam Ottley, and Peter Yang.
See all on the Claude Code page
Ali Abdaal recommends it
"The first one is a physical journal that goes in the S tier... What journaling does is that it helps you figure out what to actually work on... running through various journaling prompts with my physical journal in real life helped me figure out what kind of business I want to..."
▶ Play at 18:33
Ali Abdaal recommends it
"Time tracking is insanely helpful as a productivity tool... For me personally, I find that my focus increases about 2x if I just have a timer in the background... Almost everyone I've given that advice to has found that it's drastically improved the quality of focus."
▶ Play at 19:45
Ali Abdaal recommends it
"The single most useful productivity technique in existence, which is time blocking where every day and every week you are blocking on your calendar when you want to be doing certain things. So in my case, for example, I know that Mondays are days where I'm working on the curri..."
▶ Play at 20:486 creators recommend it, including Cal Newport, Amy Timberlake, and David Epstein.
See all on the Time blocking page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"My Google Calendar is one of those because of the single most useful productivity technique in existence, which is time blocking... Being able to time block all of those things in Google Calendar is absolutely life-changing because I'm able to construct my ideal ordinary week."
▶ Play at 20:419 creators recommend it, including Peter Yang, Cal Newport, and Kath Korevec.
See all on the Google Calendar page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"Notion is still on the S tier. I've been using Notion every single day mostly for my work stuff since like 2019. And really the value of Notion, why it's so much better than a task manager is because we use Notion for project management... that is why Notion is absolutely indi..."
▶ Play at 23:4939 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown, Jason Calacanis, and Dan Shipper.
See all on the Notion page
Ali Abdaal uses it
"And me and my team increasingly find Notion AI very helpful as well to be able to query the entire Notion workspace."
▶ Play at 24:26What they recommend · 17 picks
Productivity
12 picks · Ali Abdaal ·Ali's productivity →
"The first one is a physical journal that goes in the S tier... What journaling does is that it helps you figure out what to actually work on... running through various journalin..."
"Time tracking is insanely helpful as a productivity tool... For me personally, I find that my focus increases about 2x if I just have a timer in the background... Almost everyon..."
"My Google Calendar is one of those because of the single most useful productivity technique in existence, which is time blocking... Being able to time block all of those things ..."
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5 picks · Ali Abdaal ·Ali's AI tools →
"This is the icon for the Hermes agent, which is my personal favorite one these days... I started out with OpenClaw initially, and then I just found that OpenClaw required so muc..."
"This for me is now how mostly I talk to AI because I'm able to just hit the dictation key and Wispr Flow is able to transcribe everything that I say... for those team members, a..."
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