The 6 AI tools that are accelerating my life

Over the past 2 years, I have been challenging myself to see how fast I can move by leaning into the newest AI tools on the market. After exploring and testing dozens of them, these are the six that actually stuck in my daily workflow, ranked from "nice to have" to "I would genuinely miss this tomorrow." Give one a try and see how much easier your life becomes almost overnight.

6. Granola – Meeting brain extension

Granola is running in the background of pretty much all my in person meetings now. I tap it on, it records what is being said, and it turns that into high quality notes so I am not stuck half listening and half typing during important conversations.

If I do jot my own notes, it enhances them, fills in gaps, and structures action items so I can stay present and still walk away with a solid written record. It sits at the bottom of this list not because it is weak, but because my day can still function without it if I really have to.

5. Gemini in Chrome – Screen aware copilot

Gemini in Chrome is clutch because it can actually see the page you are on and help you in context. You can have Gemini look at your screen and ask it for help or advice on whatever you are dealing with, whether that is debugging UI, understanding a dashboard, or summarizing a long document, without any copy and paste.

It feels like having a lightweight Jarvis sitting inside your browser, ready to jump in on whatever tab you are staring at. It is not the center of my workflow yet, but every time I use it I get a glimpse of what the browser will probably feel like by default in a few years.

4. NotebookLM – Power study mode

NotebookLM has turned me into a power learner. When I want to deeply understand something, like Stripe or a completely new domain, I load in the docs, notes, and resources, then treat it like a personalized tutor that only cares about my material.

The killer feature is the AI generated podcast that it creates on the fly from your sources, so you can literally listen your way into understanding while you walk, commute, or lift. With interactive mode, you can even talk to the podcast hosts and steer the conversation, which makes studying feel less like homework and more like a dialogue.

3. Wispr Flow – Next level voice dictation

Wispr Flow is a speed boost for everything that involves text. I use it to talk to AI, write texts, and draft emails at around 124 words per minute, which is roughly three times faster than the average typing pace, and I no longer stress about grammar or formatting.

The more comfortable you get speaking your thoughts out loud, the more it feels like taking a bottleneck out of your brain. Instead of losing ideas because typing feels like work, you just talk, and Wispr Flow turns that into clean, usable text across whatever app you are in.

2. Cursor – AI pair programmer

Cursor is my daily driver for writing code, for both personal projects and professional work. The plan feature is my favorite part, because before I touch the keyboard I can co design a step by step implementation plan with Cursor, then let it generate scaffolding and scripts so I can immediately start testing and iterating.

It completely changes how fast I can spin up new ideas or refactor old ones because instead of manually wiring everything, I am reviewing and steering. This tool nudges you out of pure coder mode and into more of an architect mindset, where you spend more time on design, tradeoffs, and patterns and less time on boilerplate.

1. Perplexity – Reliable search and brainstorming

Perplexity has basically replaced traditional search engines for me. I use it to brainstorm ideas, find sources, and have back and forth conversations with AI about whatever I am curious about, from technical questions to completely random rabbit holes.

It pulls from multiple models like Claude and Gemini under the hood and layers in live web research, so the answers are both smart and grounded in current information, with citations if I want to verify anything. Out of all six tools, this is the one that quietly touches the most parts of my life every day, which is why it takes the top spot.

If there is a theme across this list, it is that each tool removes a small layer of friction from a different part of the day. You do not need to install all six at once, but if you pick the one that maps to your biggest current bottleneck and give it a real week in your workflow, you will feel the difference.