5 Productivity Apps I Use Every Day
2026-01-28 · Short · Ali · recording, 1:21 · watch on YouTube
Topic: Tools, apps and tech · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: AI, His own products discussed
In a Short, Ali names five apps he uses every day: Notion with Notion AI, Cursor for writing and drafting his Lifestyle Business Academy curriculum, his team's VoicePal, Things 3 for his to-do list, and Claude, whose Opus 4.5 model he calls the best he has used.
What is said
The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).
00:00:00 — Five productivity apps he uses every day
- ★ Ali has used Notion every day since about 2018. (hedged) — 00:00:00 · Notion
- ★★ Ali loves Notion AI, which he says has sped up his team's workflows for basically everything they do in the business. — 00:00:00
- ★★★ Ali recently started using Cursor, known as a coding app, for writing: he keeps the large Lifestyle Business Academy curriculum in it to see what the curriculum says across its parts and to draft new parts. — 00:00:00 · Lifestyle Business Academy
- ★★ Ali uses VoicePal, the app his team built, every day: he records himself speaking on a walk, the app asks follow-up questions, and he exports a first draft; he uses it for video ideas. — 00:00:29 · VoicePal
- ★★ Ali has used Things 3 for his to-do list for the last five years; of the many to-do list apps he has tried, it is the one he keeps coming back to. — 00:00:29 · Things 3
- ★★ Ali's team is making its own to-do list app, which is still in development. — 00:00:29
- ★★★ Claude from Anthropic is Ali's favourite general-purpose AI tool, on computer and phone; he calls Claude Opus 4.5 the best model he has used, though he keeps testing ChatGPT and Gemini models. — 00:00:58 · Claude, ChatGPT
Threads in this video
- refine · Which AI assistant should you use? — Claude from Anthropic is Ali's favourite general-purpose AI tool, on computer and phone; he calls Claude Opus 4.5 the best model he has used, though he keeps testing ChatGPT and Gemini models. (00:00:58)
- refine · Which productivity apps should you use? — Ali recently started using Cursor, known as a coding app, for writing: he keeps the large Lifestyle Business Academy curriculum in it to see what the curriculum says across its parts and to draft new parts. (00:00:00)
- milestone · Lifestyle Business Academy, Ali's curriculum for building a lifestyle business to $100,000 a year in profit (2025) — Ali recently started using Cursor, known as a coding app, for writing: he keeps the large Lifestyle Business Academy curriculum in it to see what the curriculum says across its parts and to draft new parts. (00:00:00)
- milestone · Sparkle Studios, Ali and Izzy's app company (2025) — Ali's team is making its own to-do list app, which is still in development. (00:00:29)
Where the stories that moved here went next
- Lifestyle Business Academy, Ali's curriculum for building a lifestyle business to $100,000 a year in profit (2025) — running; last: milestone, 2026-10-19
- Sparkle Studios, Ali and Izzy's app company (2025) — running; last: milestone, 2026-04-18
Mentioned
Central: Claude · Cursor
Also: Projects: Lifestyle Business Academy
Organizations: Anthropic
Products: ChatGPT · Claude Opus 4.5 · Gemini · Notion · Notion AI · Things 3 · VoicePal
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