7 tools I’m taking with me into 2026

Last year I tested a LOT of tools. Probably too many!!

Some were exciting for a week or two, then I just… stopped opening them.

And then there are a few I kept coming back to. Without thinking, on autopilot.
On busy days, tired days, days when I really didn’t want extra friction.

Those are the tools I’m taking with me into 2026.

Not because they’re trendy - just because they quietly made life easier, and work calmer.

Here’s that list.

This became my default starting point for research.

If I need to understand something quickly, sanity-check an idea, or explore a new direction, I open Perplexity first. It saves me from opening ten tabs and disappearing into rabbit holes I didn’t plan to visit 😅

What I like most is the feeling of clarity. I get a clean answer, with sources, and I can decide what actually deserves deeper thinking. and what doesn’t.

I didn’t expect this setup to matter as much as it did!

But having a tiny, reliable recording kit removed a lot of friction. Ideas don’t wait for a “proper setup”, and this made it easy to capture thoughts, moments, conversations… when they happen.

It’s simple, it just works, and that’s exactly why it stayed.

This is literally the backbone of how my team operates.

Projects, notes, planning, context - everything lives there.
What changed last year is how intentional we became about structure.

Notion stopped being “a place to dump things”, and became a shared thinking space.

When a tool helps a team think more clearly together, replacing it becomes very hard.

This one surprised me.

I didn’t buy them with productivity in mind at all!
But they quietly changed how I capture moments and ideas during the day.

Hands-free photos. quick voice notes. no setup.
It feels less like a gadget and more like an extension of memory.

Once you get used to that, going back feels weird.

This tool saved my team a lot of time.

Turning long-form content into short clips used to be slow and mentally draining. And what’s important OpusClip didn’t replace taste or judgment, but it handled the repetitive parts really well.

Short-form started to feel lighter.
Less effort, more consistency.

That alone earned it a place in our stack.

I know, this one is obvious, but how I actually use it might not be.

I don’t use ChatGPT only for work - it quietly supports many parts of my life.

Roughly, this is how it looks for me:

What surprised me most isn’t the business part.
It’s how much mental load it removes from everyday decisions.

I use it to prepare, sanity-check, and think more clearly. Not instead of judgment, but to reach it faster.

At this point it feels less like a tool, and more like quiet infrastructure.

This one is for images, but I use it more like a quick way to think visually.

It helps me see ideas early, before they turn into projects, decks, or something I need to seriously commit to.

I’ll generate a few visuals, look at them, and usually it’s very clear right away either there’s something there, or there isn’t.

It just makes testing ideas feel easy and low-effort.

And sometimes that’s all I need to move on faster, instead of overthinking things.

In 2026, I’m not trying to use more tools.

I’m trying to use fewer, better ones. The kind that reduce friction instead of adding to it.

These absolutely passed that test.

And if you have a tool you tested, dropped, and still came back to… I’m always interested in those. Feel free to reply to this email.

— Marina