Three apps that made me more productive this year

Note-taking "software can’t automate your thinking. But I do think it can create the conditions for improved thinking:

• making new connections between ideas"
• helping reduce distraction
• "organizing your reading and making it more useful"

Casey then intros a few apps he's started using since his last post, starting with "Capacities... Don’t take notes — make notes". Like others, but with a nicer interface, an "integrated AI assistant, which can be useful for exploring new topics and appending what you learn to notes you take there" and the ability to create many object types like "Daily Notes, People and Books".

"the real power" actually came from how Capacities helped him adopt zettlekasten to "creating notes that organize my thinking around individual narratives... I combine my reading of the morning news with active note-making... feels most useful to people who work with ideas.

"Raycast... Search without leaving your current tab... a launcher app for Mac... paid add-on ... lets you access the latest AI models".

"Readwise... Generative AI can make for a great librarian... the app’s AI-powered “Ghostreader” function" allows you to interrogate PDFs. While you'll need to read it yourself eventually, "Ghostreader is often useful at suggesting where to start" or find something specific. Readwise also "has a built-in RSS reader".

A free alternative: "Google’s NotebookLM experiment lets you save a bunch of PDFs into virtual notebooks and ask questions of them collectively... You can also upload PDFs directly to Anthropic’s Claude and other chatbots".

Of course, using tools like Readwise doesn't mean you'll read or otherwise use what you save, as Andy Matuschak points out: "Collecting material feels more useful than it usually is”. Which is why these tools are nothing without a supportive workflow.