Every AI productivity article gives you a list. Twenty tools. Thirty shortcuts. A hypothetical morning routine that assumes you have three uninterrupted hours and no meetings before 10am.
This isn't that. This is the actual workflow I use on days when I have back-to-back calls, something urgent comes in before 9am, and I still need to produce things that are good.
I'm going to take you through it from morning to end of day, and I'll be honest about what AI handles, what it doesn't, and what it costs.
The Philosophy First
The only AI stack that works long-term is one that removes friction at the exact moment friction appears — not in theory, but in your actual day. If using the tool requires switching contexts, explaining yourself from scratch, or trusting output you can't quickly verify, the tool won't stick.
Every tool I've kept has passed this test: would I use this when I'm already tired and mildly overwhelmed? If the answer is no, it lives in a demo video, not my workflow.
Morning: Clear the Cognitive Queue (15–20 minutes)
Before I open email or check Slack, I do a quick brain dump into Claude. Not a structured prompt — literally just what's in my head. What's on my plate today. What I'm worried about. What I need to decide.
Claude helps me sort it. Not because it has magical insight, but because having to articulate thoughts clearly enough for AI to understand them forces me to clarify them for myself. It's the externalizing-your-thinking trick, just faster than journaling.
From this I get: a rough priority list for the day, and any decisions I was avoiding named explicitly.
Time: 10 minutes
Tool: Claude
Cost: Free tier is enough for this. Pro ($20/month) if you want persistent memory across sessions.
Late Morning: The Writing Block
Most of what I produce professionally involves writing. I use AI at two specific points in that process:
First draft generation. I'll give Claude a brief — the point I want to make, who I'm writing for, any specific constraints — and ask for a first draft. I don't use that draft directly. I use it as a thing to react to. Editing is faster than writing from a blank page, and AI drafts give me something concrete to push against.
Polish pass. After I've written my own version, I'll run it through one more pass asking Claude to catch anything that's unclear, redundant, or where my argument is weaker than I think it is. It catches about 30% of what a good editor would catch. Not a replacement for a real editor, but a useful first filter.
Time: Variable, but saves me 20–40% off my normal writing time
Tool: Claude
Note: Perplexity for any section that requires factual claims I want to verify before publishing.
Midday: Research and Rabbit Holes
When I need to understand something new quickly — a topic I'm writing about, a company I'm preparing to talk to, a technical concept I need to explain accurately — Perplexity is my first stop.
It gives me: a direct summary, source citations I can check, and usually a few related questions I hadn't thought to ask. It replaced about 80% of my Google search habit for this kind of research.
I still go to primary sources. But Perplexity dramatically reduces the number of tabs I have to open before I find the thing I actually wanted.
Time: Saves me 10–15 minutes per research task
Tool: Perplexity
Cost: Free tier handles most use cases. Pro (~$20/month) for more complex research.
Afternoon: Async Communication
This is where AI earns back the most time for me across a week.
I get a lot of messages that require a thoughtful response but are not urgent. Instead of writing each one from scratch, I paste the message into Claude with brief context on who it's from and what I actually want to say in response. It drafts something. I edit it to sound like me, verify the facts, and send.
I'm not outsourcing my relationships. I'm outsourcing the blank-page problem on the 12th message of the afternoon when my brain is tired and I know exactly what I want to say but can't get the phrasing right.
Time: 3–5 minutes per complex message instead of 10–15
Tool: Claude
Important caveat: I read every draft carefully before sending. AI doesn't know my relationships, the full history, or the nuances. It drafts. I decide.
End of Day: Capture and Close
Last 10 minutes of my work day: I tell Claude what got done, what didn't, and what's carrying over to tomorrow. It helps me reframe the next day's priorities and sometimes catches when I'm being overly ambitious about what I can carry forward.
I also use Notion AI to turn rough notes from the day into usable records — meeting notes cleaned up, decisions documented, action items extracted. This used to take me 20 minutes. It takes 5 now.
Time: 10 minutes
Tools: Claude + Notion AI
What I skip: I don't use any automated "capture everything" tool. Too much noise.
The Cost Breakdown
| Tool | Plan | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Claude | Pro | $20 |
| Perplexity | Free | $0 |
| Notion AI | Add-on to existing Notion plan | $10 |
| Cursor (for code) | Pro | $20 |
| Total | $50/month |
$50/month for tools I use every single day is, in my experience, the easiest ROI calculation in my budget. The time return is several hours per week. I'd pay twice this without thinking about it.
What I Don't Use (And Why)
Dedicated AI assistants with their own interfaces. I tried several. The context-switching was the killer — I didn't want to open a separate tool, I wanted AI where the work already was.
Automated workflows that run without me. I've experimented with these. They save time. They also introduce errors I find days later. Until I have a specific high-volume task where the error rate is acceptable, I prefer AI in the loop rather than AI in control.
Tools that require daily onboarding. If I have to re-explain my context every time I open the app, I won't use it consistently.
The One-Sentence Version
The AI stack that fits a busy life is small, lives where your work already lives, removes friction at the exact moments friction is highest, and requires you to stay in the loop.
That's it. You don't need twenty tools. You need three or four good ones you actually open.
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