Four out of five are productivity related. Only one is not a software product. (you know what type of person I am!) Here are my fave product discoveries of 2018!

Easily email yourself. I discovered this at the clutch end of 2018, but love it. I use email as my personal “to-do” dashboard – I email myself to remind future me to put something on my to-do list. But it was always so tedious having to open up email, click “New”, type a subject, press Send etc. I also get distracted every time I opened up my email app, always ending up checking emails instead of writing the reminder. NotaBene eliminates those workflow problems!

Pros: Soooo simple. Makes my workflow very efficient!

Cons: No big cons so far, but I imagine this product is mostly catered to specific types of users/use cases (such as myself).

Optimizing the commuter bus times to get to work

Tracking my personal finances!

Keeping accountable thru weight tracking with dad!

Helps me track different parts of my life. I’ve been using Spreadsheets since ever but I put it on this list because I’ve only optimized it for my personal life just this year. It’s helped me keep track of my weight, fitness, finances, commutes, & so much more. More spreadsheets to come this 2019!

Pros: Powerful powerful powerful! Also accessible anywhere, making collaboration sooo great (ah, the power of the cloud). That’s what’s keeping me accountable (ex. I setup fitness/weight trackers with my dad and my cousins!)

Cons: Lots of upfront work. (But TBH, love doing all that work & customizing it to my needs. But yes, still takes a significant amount of time.)

An umbrella that keeps the water away. The only non-software product on this list! I first discovered this at my boyfriend’s house on a rainy day. We thought it was just some fancy looking umbrella (looked very sleek, handle was unique), but later on discovered that it designed to solve the messy umbrella problem through its reverse-open technology. 😮

Pros: Sleek design + solves that umbrella-gets-everything-wet-when-closed problem

Cons: For the one that I used, the handle has a C shape, which sometimes makes it hard to hook anywhere. Aside from it being a unique design, I don’t quite yet know why the handle has to have that shape versus the regular umbrella handle one.

Dock with all my apps in one place. This baby is my personal dashboard. All the apps I need are in one place every time I open up my laptop. No need to re-open all my tabs and get confused which window I opened it up at.

Pros: All-in-one dock! Makes life so much more efficient. They also have A LOT of integrations – surprised how they got this many up while being very young, but I guess without all these integrations, there would really be no value add haha.

Cons: Crashes A LOT!

Documents, notes, and my personal work all in one place. 100% my top 1 for this year. It’s SO well designed & makes it easy (& fun) for me to want to do any and all kinds of work. (In fact, wrote the draft to this on a notion doc) I luckily got grandfather-ed into their previous business model & so have an unlimited number of blocks. (Hehe!) But for the Personal subscription, $4 a month for a spectacular product? Not bad!On this, I’ve been able to document my Books to Read/Read, SF Food Places, 2019 Goals, blog drafts, work docs & SO. MUCH. MORE. My FAVORITE.

Pros: Well-designed, simple, fun & feeds into productivity. My favorites about it are its simple relational database model, checklist functionality & easy to use file organization.

Cons: Collaboration is gr8 IF other people also have Notion accounts & use the product frequently. It’s still in infancy so it has quite some time before it can get there.