The tools I practice with
Not a recommendations list. These are the apps and objects TimeCrafting actually runs on for me, right now.
I keep this page short on purpose, I take things off it when I stop using them, and I say why at the bottom. If you want to know how I work, this is a truer answer than any course description.
Disclosure, up front: some of the links below are affiliate links. If you sign up through one, I earn a small commission at no cost to you. Every tool here is one I use, not one I'm paid to list.
Featured
SavvyCal — how people get on my calendar
Every free 15-minute call with me starts here, and so does every coaching session and podcast booking. I picked it in 2021 when Woven shut down. I've stayed because it treats the person booking with the same care as the person sharing the link: they can overlay their own calendar and see where we overlap, and nobody has to send "does Tuesday work?" back and forth.
What I value most is that it lets me protect time without walls. I set the windows I'm available in, and the rest stays mine. That's TimeCrafting in practice: deciding when you're available before anyone asks.
The rest of the stack
Each one is tied to the part of the practice it serves. If it isn't, it isn't here.
ClickUp
Work tasks
Where all my work tasks live. It scales with whatever I throw at it, and it's the tool I've built the most TimeCrafting structure inside: daily themes, horizontal theming, attention paths, all of it.
Todoist
Personal tasks
Where my personal tasks live. I've kept work and life in separate apps for years, on purpose. Todoist is simple enough that I never fight it, and it's where I first wrote about this stuff. TimeCrafting in Todoist covers the setup.
Apple Reminders
The small, time-bound stuff
The underrated one. It's free, it's already on your phone, and with a little structure it holds up as a TimeCrafting tool. I use it for the things that don't deserve a project.
Kit
The Lantern and The Margins
Runs The Lantern, my Saturday email, and The Margins on Mondays. I moved here from Mailchimp years ago and haven't looked back. If you're building a list and want to treat readers like people instead of a database, this is the one.
SaneBox
Email, mid-move
I'm in the middle of moving my email over to this. It sorts what matters from what can wait before I ever see the inbox, which is the only email feature I've ever really wanted. I'll say more here once I've lived in it for a season.
Circle
The TimeCrafting Trust
Home of the TimeCrafting Trust, my community. It's where the practice gets revised in public, with other people in the room.
Reflection
Daily journal
My daily journal since February 2021. Reflective practice is the part of TimeCrafting people skip, and this is how I don't. It pairs with The Journaling Course if you want structure for your own.
Morgen
Calendar
My calendar app. Honest note: I don't use it to its full depth. I use it because it lets me see time theming on the calendar itself, which is the part I need.
Amplenote
Notes, provisionally
I've been in it since leaving Evernote and I like it, but I haven't gone all-in on anything as a true Evernote replacement yet. I'm honestly not sure why. Part of it is that fourteen years of notes is a lot of gravity. Part of it might be that I don't need the single big vault I once thought I did. I'll update this line when I know.
NeuYear
The wall calendar
I designed five editions of a wall calendar with Jesse at NeuYear. That calendar's retired now, but I still point people to NeuYear because a year-at-a-glance wall calendar is the single best tool for seasonal and monthly theming I've found.
Transistor
Podcast hosting
A Productive Conversation has been on the air since 2008 in one form or another, and Transistor is where it lives now. Clean stats, no nonsense, and it handles more than one show without charging me for each.
Alitu
Podcast production
Where each episode gets cut, cleaned and leveled. I'm not an audio engineer and I don't want to become one; Alitu lets me spend the time on the conversation instead of the waveform.
Soundstripe
Music for the show and videos
Every piece of music under the podcast and my videos comes from here, licensed properly. If you make anything with sound, the code VARDY10 takes 10% off.
Canva
Everything visual
Thumbnails, the Productiveness Portraits, slides, the odd social post. I'm nowhere near its ceiling and I don't need to be. It does what I ask and gets out of the way.
Zoom
Coaching and conversations
Where coaching sessions and most podcast interviews happen. I want to share a screen, record cleanly and have the call not drop. It does those three things.
Blinkist
Where the Diet lives in 15 minutes
Not a tool I run my days on, but a place my work lives: The Productivity Diet is on Blinkist, and so are Shortcasts of A Productive Conversation. If you want the short version before the long one, start there.
What I stopped using, and why
The page only means something if things come off it.
- Evernote. Fourteen years, then I left. The product changed hands and direction more than my notes could follow. What replaced it is still an open question (see Amplenote above).
- Day One. Nine years of journaling. I switched to Reflection in 2021 for the prompts.
- Scribd and Brain.fm. Both fine. Neither is part of the practice anymore.
For everything else
My list is deliberately short. If you're looking for a tool that isn't here, Tool Finder is a partner I point people to.
It's a proper directory, and it's clear about what's sponsored.
