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Tech Productivity

Issue #359  (Top Productivity Links of 2025) 12/29/25


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This week's issue covers the most popular apps and new articles of 2025, as determined by your clicks here in this newsletter.

As always, thanks for your loyalty to the newsletter over the past year, and for those who are new subscribers, I hope you'll enjoy the hand-picked links I include every week. No AI or automation in this newsletter; I pick everything by hand according to what I think people will enjoy.

2025 to 2026

And as a reminder, here are some ways you can support my work: I hope everyone has a safe end to the year, and I'll be back with a brand new set of links in 2026.

Now on to the top productivity links of 2025!


Top Productivity Tools of 2025

Ephe — This was by far the most-clicked tool in this newsletter over the past year. It's an open source task-friendly Markdown app to organize your daily todos and thoughts, giving you a single 'page of paper' to write down and deal with what matters today.

Lunatask — Coming in second place, this is an all-in-one encrypted to-do list, habit tracker, journaling, life-tracking, and notes app that remembers stuff for you and keeps track of your mental well-being.

A New Place to Read Your Newsletters — We’re trying out a free app for reading newsletters called Khaki. The interface is clean, distraction-free, and only shows the newsletters you're subscribed to, no noise of everything else in your usual inbox. sponsor

Radarist — Another popular tool, this one is a clean, simple, and high-performance web app that offers solo project management for busy people, with powerful search, project templates, and more.

kan.bn — Coming in fourth place, this is an open source alternative to Trello, a powerful, flexible Kanban app that helps you organize work, track progress, and deliver results.

Kando — Number five is a cross-platform pie menu for your desktop that offers an unconventional, fast, highly efficient, and fun way of interacting with your computer.

Startboard — And completing the list of top tools, this is a better start page for your browser that takes a new approach by integrating a quick and clean way to access the places on the internet you use most.

Timelinize — I was going to leave this one out, but it had virtually the same percentage of clicks as the previous tool, so it gets an honorable mention. It's an open source personal archival suite that organizes all your data (photos, videos, messages, chats, social media, etc.) onto a single, unified timeline on your own computer (Mac, Windows, Linux).

Top Productivity Articles of 2025

The Key Lessons from 10 Important Books on Productivity — This was the most popular 'new' article (others had more clicks but were older posts). The intro includes a quick summary of five important points gleaned, followed by the ten larger points with links to all the books.

The Simple Habit That Saves My Evenings — Next most popular is this article with some advice for those constantly looking for that lengthy period of 'focused' time, only to find it late in the day when you're too exhausted to do the work.

Pushing Side Projects Forward with Almost No Free Time — This one also resonated well, since most of us work on side projects and probably have the same problem of not being able to find time to work on them.

Brain Food, Delivered Daily — Every day the folks at Refind analyze thousands of articles and send you only the best, tailored to your interests. Loved by 550,000+ curious minds. sponsor

45 Tips – That You Haven’t Heard a Million Times Before – to Improve Your Sleep — For good reason this one was popular, providing research-backed tips for improving your sleep, taken from the book Trick Yourself to Sleep by Kim Jones.

5 Simple Productivity Hacks You'll Wish You Knew Sooner — A popular article for those in leadership positions, including tips for improving your morning routine, time boxing, reading for growth, eating healthy, and having a solid night routine.

How I Automated My Computer Routine with macOS Folder Actions — I don't include too many posts like this one, but it did well. It's a useful productivity hack that allows you to do all sorts of things quickly without all the manual work, for those not familiar with Folder Actions on Mac.

How Not To Lose Your Job to AI — And finally, here's an 'honorable mention' in the area of AI. It includes a chart that lists the skills that are most likely to increase in value as AI progresses (e.g. leadership skills and complex physical skills).

Suggestions?

Have a suggestion for a productivity-related tool, article, or other resource? Send me a direct message via X or chat via Bluesky and I’ll consider including it in a future issue.

Stay productive!

Louis
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