Today’s Morning Buzz is by Michael Baskin, human, serving Montgomery County, Maryland as Chief Innovation Officer (come join our innovation Accelerator). Michael is also a Fellow at The People Lab @ Harvard Kennedy School, exploring the future of local government organizations, and an executive coach working with leaders writing their own stories. Stories on Substack — connect with Michael on LinkedIn, Bluesky, or (for a rural setting) Instagram. Also accepts and returns postcards.
- What I’m reading: An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon / Language and the Pursuit of Happiness by Brothers Chalmers / Upgrade: Building Your Capacity for Complexity by Richard Boston and Karen Ellis
- What I’m watching: 2025 Vuelta De España (Yes, I’m behind. No spoilers, please.)
- What I’m listening to: Change Signals / Robert Kegan – The Five Stages of Adult Development on Emerge
- A hobby I enjoy: Collecting photos of outdoors public benches…while asking questions about categories (What is a bench? What is public … and who?).
How do you get it done? I find myself regularly recommending the same set of tools and apps for daily practice and am constantly curious about what folks keep on their little glowing screens.
Today, I’m sharing — not just the apps, but also my thoughts on the underlying operating systems and how we can get ready for emergent futures, generative AI and all. I’d love to hear about what you use and how — let’s upgrade together.
“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them” – David Allen, Getting Things Done
What if you had a trusted, accessible place for all your to-dos, projects, conversations-to-be-had, reference materials, writing pieces, and other things that we all too often try to use our brains to hold onto? The milk to pick up, the friend to call back, that gift card that has to be used, that scheduling request you’re waiting for someone to respond to, the trip you’ve been dreaming of, that article to read — these things clutter our brains. For many of us, just reading that list triggered a whole other slew of things to do. Where did you put them? When we hold them, they hold us.
We can put them down when we trust ourselves and our processes to sort, clarify, get current, and get it done. That opens up space to get creative. In the words of Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan in their book, Scarcity, we open up some extra space in our suitcase, and that slack makes all the difference. It quite literally reshapes our brains.
For the last decade or so I’ve been continuously upgrading my practice of getting things done. These apps below all support Getting Things Done and operate off of the idea that a second brain is immensely powerful and about to become the capital compounding rapidly. I’ve vetted many and use these.
For the future, whether you are using generative AI regularly or not, the more that our information is held in our digitally accessible spaces, the more powerfully we’ll be able to use these tools for ourselves. I can now mind map across all the quotes and notes from the books I’ve read, the notes I’ve taken in meetings, and the articles and podcasts with memorable lines. This goes beyond simply dumping all our favorite things into a RAG like Google’s NotebookLM. It is a wealth of the data that I have curated and processed for myself and that I will be able to use for the future. I do not know all the ways I can use this…I do know that when I have access to digital data I’ve created and curated, it opens up worlds. I switched to digital note taking (yes, I still use a pen and marker) a year back, and keep sketches in my Substack.
Trello for Getting Things Done: Notes for this article — and the next action of having to write it. Notes for my next conversation with the county executive so if I bump into him in the hallway, I know exactly what items to move forward. This is where I capture and organize what I have to do. Fast, mobile, and always improving — this is the longtime core of my Getting Things Done system. I’ve played in Notion and Coda … and love them for work with teams. If you’re in Microsoft, then Planner is their approximation.
Reader: My favorite “read it later” app, Pocket, died and I was looking for some other way to save all those “to reads” and open tabs. With Reader, I got so much more — exceptional user experience for saving, reading, and annotating everything from PDFs and books to web pages, with a feed reader where all newsletters now go instead of clogging my inbox and causing extra processing. Have articles read to you, or chat with them. I pay for almost no services or subscriptions — this one has been worth every penny.
Readwise: Whoa. I was not expecting the impact of this. Exceptional user experience with habit-building quote rituals — and getting that we like to scroll. I am now building many more connections between what I have read in the past, and getting so much more value from all those years of highlighting.
Snipd: Listening to a podcast or audiobook and hear something you want to save? In the past, that meant going back later to find the spot and copy it down. No more. With Snipd just click (including via headphone), and AI knows what you want and highlights that part of the transcript and audio. Yes, it links to Readwise.
Pomofocus: This is my favorite pomodoro timer because it is simple, tracks expectations versus actuals, and doesn’t get in the way. For me, the key to the pomodoro is actually taking the breaks.
Fathom: I resisted meeting recordings for a long time — mostly because of the beautiful story The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling by Ted Chaing that I was reading during the last ELGL Morning Buzz. There are many tools out there — I appreciate that this one allows me to do live, customized highlights (think of capturing insights or “ah-has” during a design research interview), share bits easily between teammates, and it works seamlessly. I also just ordered my first piece of AI recording hardware, a Plaud Note Pro. Jury (and shipping) still out.
Those are the core apps I recommend most frequently. In addition, I have a daily practice modified from Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Journalling, which helped me get on track and pulls from so much solid behavioral science. It’s paper and it’s a great tool.
The apps are not the operating system. And life is for becoming, not doing. As an actor in the world, we have a lot to do. I like to use my brain for doing, building, connecting and creating. The apps let me offload the holding so I can choose what and when I want to pick things up.
P.S.: Writing, I find myself reflecting on apps from lives past. I no longer use a meditation app and, yet, found Headspace very valuable in preparation for my first retreat. There are many more provided free and of high quality by universities such as UCLA.