I talk all the time about “foundational tech” that can level up America’s future.

But leveling up America starts with each of us leveling up as individuals.

With that in mind, I think it's worth creating a culture where we discuss what practical, useful foundational tech tools we use in our lives to supercharge our ability to get shit done.

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Let me start with my list:

• Notion, to draft blog posts, reflect privately, design things, and catalogue a crap ton of other information I regularly need to reference

• Vimcal, to more easily coordinate the scheduling of meetings

• Gmail, to communicate via email (I’ve heard great things about Superhuman but I don’t have problems with Inbox Zero on Gmail)

• Google Calendar, to track my meetings and conferences, and block off personal work time

• Google News, to get the news about topics I self select

• Microsoft To Do, to manage several separate to-do lists for work and personal life

• Butter, to host online meetings and creative jams that need a human vibe

• Telegram, to create specialized groupchats with tech-forward friends

• Twitter, to experiment with memes + language, and connect with web3 and other tech-forward friends

• Substack, to publish long-form thoughts that articulate something that Twitter can’t, and subscribe to some deep thinkers’ newsletters

• LinkedIn, to stay connected to peers, mentors, and partners who don’t like Twitter

• ClickUp, to manage tasks for work in a way that is legible to teammates

• TextExpander, to manage keyboard shortcuts across devices (saves a shit ton of time)

• Canva, to sketch out basic diagrams and mockups to send to real designers

• chatGPT, to help me ideate, write, and edit things

• Spotify, for music and podcasts

• Speechify, for reading out articles I’d rather hear spoken out loud (by AI)

• YouTube, for watching video-based educational content and publishing video content

• Simplecast, for publishing my podcasts to multiple platforms in one flow

• DeepL Write, for improving my grammar and sentence structure

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Without these tools, I would be nothing. Together, these tools make up my superhero utility belt.

I love these tools, but I challenge you to share your own. I want to know what tools have been essential to your productivity and prosperity.

By the way, if you're interested in this kind of content, I'd be happy to expand on it in an upcoming post.