I'm Obsessed With These 4 AI Tools — Here's Why You Might Be Too

I have become obsessed with AI. Not the half-joking, half-worried-about-robots kind of obsessed people bring up at dinner parties. I mean the kind of obsessed I get with anything that actually works, the way I once got about time blocking or setting a desired outcome for a meeting. I find a tool, I use it a few times, and then I cannot imagine going back.

But AI isn't just a better interface with more features bolted on. It's a different way of working entirely. So here are four AI tools I use every single day, not because they're cool (though they are), but because of the friction they quietly remove, friction you might not even realize is slowing you down.

One quick note before we get into it: always check with your boss or your IT team before using any unapproved tools, to make sure they meet your company's security and privacy requirements.

Remove Friction, Don't Just Add Features

The tools that actually change how you work aren't clever add-ons. They sit directly inside the tasks that eat the most time in a manager's day: writing, email, meetings, and the thing you wish existed but can’t find off the shelf. The AI tools that change your day are the ones that remove that friction so you can focus on what actually matters.

Wispr Flow: Stop Typing, Start Talking

Wispr Flow is a dictation tool, but calling it that undersells what it does. I talk, and it turns whatever I say into clean, properly formatted text, whether that's a Slack message, an email, a bullet list buried inside a two-page memo, or a conversation with Claude.

Typing is a bottleneck, even for people who are good at it. When you sign up for Wispr Flow, you can take a speed typing test and it will tell you how many hours you would save by talking instead of typing. Mine came back at twenty three hours, and I'm a fast typer. 

It's not just about speed, either. Sometimes it is simply easier to talk your thoughts out loud, and then watch them arrive formatted and clean. It feels like magic.

Shortwave: Let AI Handle the First Pass on Your Inbox

Shortwave is an AI email client, and what I love most is how much you can train it to sort your email. I get a huge amount of outreach from PR agents and potential podcast guests, so I taught Shortwave to identify outreach emails, assess them against my guest criteria, and hand me a list sorted into who to consider, who is not a good fit, and who is a maybe.

I still review every inquiry myself, but everything arrives pre-sorted, which makes my review significantly faster. I have about six sorting rules set up: emails from clients always get flagged, and so do emails from my kids' school with an actual action item, not just the weekly newsletter. Shortwave can tell the difference between something that needs a response, like a field trip form, and something that's just an FYI.

This solves one of my biggest email problems: triage. Every message forces you to decide how urgent it is and what it needs, and that decision-making tax is what slows you down. Shortwave does that first pass, drafts responses, and reminds me when something has gone unanswered.

Granola: Meeting Notes That Write Themselves

Granola listens during calls and produces a transcript along with clean, organized notes afterward, without me typing a single word during the meeting. What makes it different is that it works for phone calls and in-person meetings too, not just virtual ones. Once you get used to automatic notes from Zoom, going back to taking your own notes in person feels like a step backward.

I really put Granola to the test when I used the mobile app in a loud room with six people gathered around a table. I set it in the middle, unsure if it would be able to hear us amidst the noise, but it captured the conversation and generated notes exceptionally well. I appreciate that when used for virtual meetings, it doesn't join the meeting as a visible participant (Mamie’s AI notetaker has joined the meeting), and it only captures text, not video, so there's a lot less data sitting around. You can also build custom templates so a team meeting produces notes structured differently than a one-on-one or a project planning session.

Replit: Build the Tool You Wish Existed

Replit lets you build actual working software, apps, internal tools, trackers, just about anything, by describing what you want in plain language. I am not a developer. (I tried to learn HTML back in the early 2010s and it did not stick.) But I have used Replit to build small tools for my business that used to mean hours of manual work, hiring someone else, or just living without them.

For example, I manage my tasks in Notion, but I couldn’t find an existing app or shortcut to send a voice note straight into a Notion database with the right due date, tag, project, and owner. So I asked Replit to build that for me. It took about an hour on a Saturday. Now I open the app, start talking, and a few seconds later it's sitting in Notion with the right properties attached.

I've built five apps so far, and I have a running list of about a hundred more. Think about how many times your team has said, ‘I wish there was a simple way to do this,’ and your current tools just weren't capable. That's the gap Replit closes.

Pick the Tool That Matches Your Bottleneck

What all four of these tools have in common is that they take the administrative layer, typing, sorting, note-taking, technical execution, off your plate and hand you back time and attention.

So pick whichever tool maps to your actual bottleneck, not just the one that sounds coolest. If you hate typing, try Wispr Flow on your next email or Slack message. If your inbox feels unmanageable, spend thirty minutes training Shortwave. If you're in a lot of meetings, bring Granola along, virtual or in person. And if you have a running list of small things you wish existed, spend twenty minutes describing the simplest version to Replit and see what comes back.

Try one this week and let me know what you built, or what you finally stopped doing by hand.

The Modern Manager is a leadership podcast for rockstar managers who want to close the gap between knowing what good management is and actually doing it.

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