You do not need 20 AI tools

Start here

20 tabs is not a system

Every week there is a new AI tool you are supposed to try. You sign up, poke at it for 10 minutes, and never open it again. Then the next one arrives.

Nobody gets ahead by having 20 tools bookmarked. The advantage comes from knowing 2 tools well enough to stop thinking about them. One assistant for the everyday work, and one specialist for the thing you do every week. That is the whole rule.

If you cannot name the work in one sentence, you do not need the tool yet.

One assistantOne specialistCancel the rest

Step 1

Pick one assistant

ChatGPT or Claude. One of them, for writing, thinking, research, and the 30 small questions a day. Learning one well beats sampling 6. Both are good. This is how they differ.

ChatGPTThe widest set of plugins and connections, image making built in, and the free plan now runs on a strong model. Pick it if you want one app that touches your calendar, inbox and files.
ClaudeLong documents, careful writing, drafts that sound like a person, and skills you can save and call by name. Pick it if most of your work is words and you want it to remember how you like things done.

How to choose in 5 minutes

Paste the same real task into both. A client email you owe, or a page you need rewritten. Send the answer you would need to edit less. Then stop comparing. The comparing is the thing that was costing you.

Step 2

Add one specialist, by the kind of work you do

Find the row that describes what you do most weeks. That is your second tool. Ignore every other row until that one is boring to you.

The work

The specialist

Why that one

Research with your own documents

Gemini Notebook

Answers only from the files you upload, and every line points back to the page it came from. This is the old NotebookLM, renamed.

Research on the open web

Perplexity

Answers with the sources next to them, so you can click and check before you repeat a number.

Social graphics, slides, print

Canva

Design for people who are not designers, with AI inside. Your brand colors and fonts saved once.

Meetings and calls

Otter or Fireflies

Records the call, types the transcript, sends the summary and the action list. You stop taking notes.

Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint

Microsoft Copilot

AI inside the files you already live in. No exporting, no pasting.

Notes, a wiki, your own knowledge base

Notion AI

Finds and summarizes inside your own workspace, so the answer comes from your pages.

A calendar that keeps moving

Motion or Reclaim

Puts your tasks on the calendar and moves them when the day changes.

Video and podcast editing

Descript

Edit the video by editing the transcript. Delete the sentence, the clip is gone.

Voiceovers

ElevenLabs

Natural voices in many languages, from a script.

Getting apps to talk to each other

Zapier

When this happens in one app, do that in another. No code.

Left off on purpose

Coding and app building tools (Cursor, Copilot, Replit, Lovable, Bolt). If you run a business of one and do not write software, those belong on someone else's list. Wanting to build an app someday is a different question from what you do this week.

Before you start

4 steps and you're done

Name your weekly work in one sentence

"Most weeks I write proposals and sit in client calls." That sentence picks your row. If you cannot write it, you are not ready for a specialist yet, and that is fine.

Pick the row, sign up for one

One. Read its own getting-started page, not a 40 minute review of it.

Use it 5 times before you judge it

The first 2 runs are always clumsy. Tools get judged on run 5, on real work, not on the demo.

Cancel what you are not using

Open your bank statement. Every AI subscription you have not opened in 30 days goes. This step pays for the other 3.

Bonus

The prompt that picks for you

If you are stuck between 2 rows, let your assistant decide. Paste this into ChatGPT or Claude with the picker above.

Copy it. Fill in anything in [brackets].

Here is what I do in a typical week: [list the 5 or 6 things, e.g. client calls, writing proposals, posting on Instagram, invoicing, editing photos].
Here is what I already pay for: [your current tools and subscriptions].
Here is a list of specialist AI tools, each matched to a kind of work: [paste the picker from the page].

Pick the one specialist I should learn next. Tell me which one and why in 3 sentences, what I should cancel, and the first real task I should do in it this week. If none of them fit my week, say so.

When it names a tool, do the first task it suggests the same day. The tool you use once today beats the 3 you plan to try next month.