There are thousands of apps.
You need about seven.
This is the short list. What each category is genuinely for, what to look for when you choose, and — the part most sites skip — who should ignore it completely.
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you — sometimes you get a discount through it. What that money does not do is buy a place on this list. Nothing appears here that we wouldn’t recommend to a friend with no commission attached, and every entry includes who should skip it. If we ever stop believing in something, it comes off the page, commission or not. Full detail on our affiliate disclosure page.
The AI assistant
If you only ever adopt one thing from this whole site, make it this. It is the single highest-leverage tool available to a non-technical person today.
Best for: writing and replying, thinking something through, summarising long documents, explaining anything at the level you actually need, planning, and drafting the boring stuff.
Skip it if: you need guaranteed factual accuracy without checking. These tools are confident even when wrong. Treat every factual claim as a first draft, not a verdict — and never paste in ID numbers, banking details or anyone else’s private information.
The connector
The thing that makes your existing apps talk to each other, so a form submission becomes an invoice becomes a reminder — without you.
Best for: anything you do more than twice a week that involves moving information between two places.
Skip it if: you haven’t yet written down which task you’re automating. People buy these, build nothing, and cancel three months later. Do Day 2 of the Reset first.
Best for: enquiries, bookings, quote requests, client onboarding. Skip it if: your enquiries all arrive by WhatsApp and always will — automate the reply instead.
The household set
Four boring tools that quietly remove most domestic friction. None of them are exciting. All of them work.
The body set
Health tech is the easiest place to waste money. Two things are worth owning; almost everything else is jewellery.
An honest health caveat
None of this is medical advice, and no consumer device diagnoses anything. Trends over weeks are useful; single readings are usually noise. If a number worries you, that is a reason to speak to a doctor, not to spend an evening reading forums.
This list changes when the tools do.
We revisit the toolkit regularly and remove anything that stops earning its place. Join the Signal and you’ll hear when something moves — including when we drop something.