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My Productive Phone Setup

2023-04-30 · Tech review, setup or bag tour · Ali · recording, 19:42 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech · mode: Review and recommendation · tags: Sponsor segment present

In his annual Tech Club tour of his iPhone, Ali goes through the apps and widgets he uses to run his life and business: Fantastical, Apple Notes, Readwise Reader, Things 3 and Todoist, Notion, Superhuman, Obsidian, Day One, ClickUp, Spotify, FT Edit, Shortform and his fitness coach's app, with how he and his team use each.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Intro: the annual what's-on-my-iPhone video of Tech Club

  • ★★ Ali calls his iPhone the productivity device he has on him at all times, and uses it for around four hours a day on average. — 00:00:00 · iPhone

00:00:29 — Home screen: Fantastical, Apple Notes, Reader and the Things inbox widget

  • ★★ The Fantastical calendar widget, showing the date, upcoming events and the month, is the first thing on Ali's iPhone home screen, because he runs his life through his calendar. — 00:00:29 · iPhone
  • ★★ Though he uses many note-taking apps, Ali finds Apple Notes a very reasonable place to jot something down quickly on his iPhone or Mac. — 00:00:58 · iPhone
  • ★★ Ali calls Apple Notes a very reliable workhorse of a note-taking app that never has synchronization issues. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali describes Readwise Reader as a glorified RSS reader that brings together the blogs and email newsletters he follows; he often saves an article to Reader before reading it. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Every highlight Ali makes in Readwise Reader is saved automatically to Readwise and synced to Notion and Obsidian, two note-taking apps he uses for different purposes. — 00:01:56 · Readwise, Notion
  • ★★ Ali captures any task or thought into the Things 3 inbox; its home-screen widget shows when the inbox starts to overflow, so he can act on or categorise the items. — 00:02:26 · Things 3
  • ★★ In Things 3 Ali has folders for Bhav, Dan and Tintin, people on his team he might delegate to, and areas of his own personal life such as relationships and fitness. — 00:02:26 · Things 3
  • ★★ Ali's Things 3 projects are goals for 2023 framed as roles: great boyfriend, group adventure leader, dinner party chef, family connections, cooking adventurer, more flexibility for acro yoga, an athletic muscular body. — 00:02:55 · Things 3
  • ★★ On his fitness project in Things 3, Ali set a goal in January for weight training and DEXA scan results, and in March noted a session with his fitness coach Dan on protein, creatine and workout changes. — 00:03:24 · Things 3
  • ★★ Ali's fun and hobbies area in Things 3 has projects for World of Warcraft and music; in learning, he wants to focus on fitness and longevity in 2023. — 00:03:24 · Things 3, World of Warcraft

00:03:53 — Instagram, Slack, Notion, MyFitnessPal, Audible and the Things today widget

  • ★★ Ali keeps Instagram on his home screen to remind him to post Instagram stories, which he calls a generally good thing to do as an online influencer. — 00:03:53 · Instagram
  • ★★ Ali's team, which calls itself the A team, messages on Slack, split into two sections: content squad and money squad. — 00:03:53 · Slack
  • ★★ In a daily Slack channel of Ali's team, everyone in theory posts every day one thing they will do for their health, work and relationships. — 00:04:22 · Slack, Day One
  • ★★ Ali keeps his relationship reviews in Notion: a set of questions he and his girlfriend go through to improve the health of their relationship. — 00:04:22 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali's team keeps its documentation in Notion: meeting notes and a company handbook covering values, probation, contracts, salary, paid time off and perks. — 00:04:22 · Notion
  • ★★ In the meetings hub in Notion, Ali's team notes every meeting and tracks action points, making sure each one has someone doing it and a due date so it actually gets done. — 00:04:52 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali's team has a content squad for the free content (social media, newsletter, book, YouTube channel, podcast) and a commercial squad for courses, the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, sponsorships, affiliates and products. — 00:04:52 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Through the Readwise integration, every book Ali highlights on Kindle or Shortform appears in Notion with its highlights, such as his 79 highlights from Luke Burgis's Wanting, read in February 2023. — 00:05:21 · Readwise, Notion, Kindle, Shortform
  • ★★ Ali uses MyFitnessPal for calorie tracking when he feels like it. — 00:05:50
  • ★★ Ali has used Audible for six or seven years: he has 243 audiobooks there and has spent one month and 15 days of his life listening to them. — 00:05:50 · Audible
  • ★★ Ali calls Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, the audiobook he was most recently listening to, absolutely sick. — 00:05:50 · Audible
  • ★★ Each morning Ali goes through his Anytime list in Things 3, decides what he actually wants to do today and moves it to Today, so it shows in the Today widget on his home screen. — 00:06:19 · Things 3

00:06:49 — The dock: Superhuman and Obsidian

  • ★★ Superhuman is Ali's email client of choice, by far the best he has used, since around 2018; he also uses it with his assistant Bhav. (hedged) — 00:06:49
  • ★★ Obsidian is Ali's main app for personal note-taking and personal knowledge management, where he builds up all the research for the book he is writing. — 00:07:18 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ With his Readwise highlights synced into Obsidian, Ali finds it super easy to turn them into a video or a newsletter issue, or use them for his book. — 00:07:47 · Readwise

00:08:11 — Sponsor read: Incogni

00:09:44 — Page two: Otter, Day One, ClickUp and Spotify

  • ★★ Ali uses Otter.ai, which transcribes recordings in real time, to record a voice note of a video idea while walking or his thoughts after listening to an audiobook. — 00:10:13
  • ★★ Ali has journaled in Day One since around 2016; its On This Day widget surfaces his entries from two to five years ago. — 00:10:13 · Day One
  • ★★ Ali answers Day One's daily journaling prompt widget as a low-friction way to journal; proper journaling he does on his Mac or iPad, since he dislikes tapping on his phone. — 00:10:42 · Day One
  • ★★ Ali's team recently switched to ClickUp, a project management app somewhat like Notion but built for project management, purely for its video and content pipeline. — 00:10:42 · Notion
  • ★★ In ClickUp, Ali's videos move from research by team members and his writing of the script through filming, editing, approval and scheduling to publishing, then into a repurposing pipeline for Instagram carousels or LinkedIn posts. — 00:11:26 · Instagram, LinkedIn
  • ★★ Ali now uses Spotify for music and podcasts: having tried all the podcast apps, including some syncing highlights to Notion and Obsidian, he found none reliable enough, while Spotify is basic, boring and reliable. — 00:11:55 · Spotify, Notion
  • ★★ Ali is listening to The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, which he calls absolutely sick, and the Empire podcast on the history of empires, whose first episodes cover the British Empire. — 00:11:55

00:12:24 — Todoist, Apollo, Loom, FT Edit and Safari

  • ★★ Ali has really been enjoying Cal Newport's podcast Deep Questions and Brendon Burchard's marketing podcast. — 00:12:24 · Cal Newport
  • ★ Ali says his music taste is very basic: his liked songs are Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and James Bay, mainstream pop, singer-songwriters, musical theatre and Disney songs. — 00:12:24
  • ★★ Ali wishes he could use one to-do app, but Things 3 has no team features, so Things holds his personal to-dos while tasks for his assistant go into Todoist, which has them. — 00:12:24 · Things 3
  • ★ Ali has asked his assistant Bhav to scout for apartments in London that he might move to. — 00:13:07 · London
  • ★★ Ali's team uses Loom to make videos for each other, which he finds great for asynchronous work, such as giving feedback on a proposal or on an editor's video. — 00:13:07
  • ★★ FT Edit, the Financial Times news app with a handful of stories a day, is Ali's manageable way of keeping up with the news without an infinite feed to scroll. — 00:13:36
  • ★★ Ali points out that Loom videos can be watched at double or 2.5x speed, so you end up saving quite a lot of time. — 00:13:36

00:14:05 — Plug: the Sunday Snippets newsletter

00:14:35 — Page three: Photos, Audible and Kindle widgets, Kindle, QuickBooks, Readwise and Shortform

  • ★★ Ali recommends the Apple Photos widget for everyone, because it resurfaces memories. — 00:14:35
  • ★★ Ali keeps Audible and Kindle widgets on his phone: when he ends up scrolling, they remind him visually that he could continue his audiobook or book instead. — 00:15:04 · Audible, Kindle
  • ★★ Kindle is one of Ali's favourite things: with spare time he often opens the Kindle app on his phone to keep reading, currently The CEO's Secret Weapon, on working with an assistant. — 00:15:42 · Kindle
  • ★★ Ali's team uses QuickBooks as the accounting software for all of his businesses. — 00:16:12
  • ★★ Readwise's daily review of six highlights, from books such as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Wanting, is Ali's way of consuming useful knowledge instead of the time-wasting kind social media offers. — 00:16:12 · Readwise
  • ★★ Shortform is Ali's favourite app for book summaries; the last one he read there was Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. — 00:16:12 · Shortform

00:16:56 — Final page: KS Fit, Gumroad, YouTube Studio, Trading 212, Speechify, Justin Guitar and the fitness app

  • ★★ Since getting a treadmill desk, run with the KS Fit app, Ali has got in many more steps in the last few months than before. — 00:17:10
  • ★★ Ali tries not to spend much time on YouTube Studio: for him making videos is about the joy of the craft and making a video that helps at least one person. — 00:17:10
  • ★★ Ali's team members spend a lot of time on the channel's analytics, drawing insights from them to hopefully make the YouTube channel better over time. — 00:17:39
  • ★★ Trading 212 is the app Ali uses for investing; he shows a return of £131.98 on a £1,000 investment. — 00:17:39
  • ★ Ali recently subscribed to Harvard Business Review and likes reading it now that he is running a business. — 00:18:09
  • ★★ Ali calls Speechify a really great text-to-speech service; he mostly uses it on his Mac rather than his iPhone. — 00:18:09 · iPhone
  • ★★ Ali has learned the guitar with Justin Guitar since 2014, first on the website and then the app; seeing the app on his phone reminds him to learn something new. — 00:18:09
  • ★★ In a white-labelled fitness app Ali uses with his fitness coach Dan, Dan programs his workouts, so at the gym Ali just opens it and executes; having workouts pre-programmed has been so helpful to him. — 00:18:52

00:19:21 — Sign-off pointing to the Trident calendar method video

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: iPhone · Notion · Obsidian · Things 3

Also: People: Bhav · Brandon Sanderson · Brendon Burchard · Cal Newport · Chip Heath · Dan (staff, mentioned from 2021) · Dan Go · Dan Heath · Ed Sheeran · James Bay · Luke Burgis · Sheryl Sandberg · Taylor Swift · Tintin

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy · Sunday Snippets · Tech Club

Works: Deep Questions · Empire · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · JustinGuitar · Lean In · Made to Stick · The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People · The CEO's Secret Weapon · The Lost Metal · The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling · Wanting

Organizations: Financial Times · Harvard Business Review · Instagram · LinkedIn · Reddit · Tesla · The Walt Disney Company · Trading 212

Concepts: acro yoga · DEXA scan · personal knowledge management · time management · Trident calendar system

Places: London

Products: Adobe Lightroom · Apollo · Apple Notes · Apple Photos · Audible · ClickUp · Day One · Fantastical · FT Edit · Gumroad · iMessage · Kindle · KS Fit · Loom · MyFitnessPal · Otter.ai · QuickBooks · Readwise · Readwise Reader · Safari · Shortform · Slack · Speechify · Spotify · Superhuman · Todoist · WhatsApp · World of Warcraft · YouTube Studio

Also centred on Obsidian: 6 MacBook apps you probably haven't heard of #shorts · My Favourite MacBook Apps of All Time

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