What’s One Tool That Saved You Hours This Year?
As Makers, we're constantly juggling product builds, user feedback, marketing, and bug fixes. Time seems to vanish in an instant. Over the past year, I’ve found that sometimes it's not a grand strategy or overhaul that makes the difference, but rather one game-changing tool that quietly handles the busywork.
For me, a standout has been Fathom, an AI-powered tool that transcribes meetings and automatically delivers highlight summaries. No more scrambling for bullets during calls, no more post-call backlog. It’s saved me hours each week. In fact, users combining tools like Fathom, ChatGPT, Asana, and Zapier have reported reclaiming 20+ hours per week by streamlining writing, research, and task automation.
I’m curious to hear from this community:
What’s one tool or product that genuinely saved you hours this year?
Was it a lightweight extension, a full-fledged platform, or somewhere in between?
Do you think time-saving tools deserve more spotlight than MVP launches or shiny new releases?
If enough people share, we’ll have a curated list of underrated productivity wins for fellow Makers to explore!
Replies
I think with vibe coding it's often overlooked the positive impact AI has had to those with programming experience. Trying to learn and implement new features just released into tool kits used to take me significantly longer, reading technical documentation, finding stack over flow posts... Where as now, I find I can implement new features and fundamentally understand the plug in a lot quicker. I've had good experience with Claude.
@jilkabir Exactly, it has seriously shrunk some timelines, especially for any part-time product makers1
Great post! Totally agree—sometimes it’s the quiet, behind-the-scenes tools that create the biggest impact. For me, Notion + AI has been a game-changer. From drafting content to managing tasks and knowledge bases, it’s helped me cut down hours of context-switching.
I think these time-saving tools absolutely deserve more spotlight 🌟—after all, saved hours = more energy for building, creating, and innovating.
Excited to see what other Makers share here!
IXORD
I like the zoom function that after the meeting it sends me the results of the meeting and immediately tells me what needs to be done, I didn’t use it that often because I don’t use Zoom often but I liked this function
For me, it’s been AI tools that simplify everyday decision-making. One small but surprisingly big win has been using AI to plan around weather + outfits/packing. I didn’t realize how much time (and stress) I was wasting each week just figuring out what to wear or what to bring for trips until I started experimenting with it. It’s not flashy, but shaving off those little decisions has saved me hours over time.
Locu. This is something I use daily to stay in flow with my work context. I prefer to look at it not in terms of saved hours, but in terms of how much more I’ve actually shipped.
Desktop app
Yes, and I’m not really looking at it as a time-saving tool, because I’m not actually working less with these tools 😄 But I’m definitely progressing much faster.