Every week, I explore new tools aimed at simplifying tasks in areas like productivity, health, and personal finance. In this post, I'll share some standout tools and explain how they form an essential part of my personal tech stack, making my life easier.

Travel

In recent years, I prioritized traveling, driven by my natural curiosity and the desire to connect with friends and family scattered across different continents.

When traveling, it is important to pack light, ideally just bringing one carry-on and a backpack. If you're spending more than a week away, you can always ask the hotel to wash your clothes. I travel with an AwayTravel flexible carry-on and a large Borealis backpack. I also have a smaller Borealis backpack to use day-to-day while exploring.

The Kayak app streamlines travel planning by consolidating plane and hotel receipts in a single list. Simply forward your confirmation emails to trips@kayak.com, and the app will automatically update your itinerary. Additionally, its iOS widget provides real-time updates on airport navigation and flight departures, making it unnecessary to juggle multiple airline apps or search for flight information on Google.

Food

I like to have three daily homemade meals, each with fresh ingredients, including a protein (chicken or fish), vegetables, bread, and olive oil, while avoiding grocery shopping except at farmer's markets.

I love cooking, dedicating hours to making pasta or pizza with friends on weekends, but I aim for quick, 10-minute meal prep on weekdays. I use two tricks to prepare fast meals with fresh raw ingredients.

I use Amazon Fresh for convenient, albeit slightly pricier, grocery delivery. For proteins, I favor sous vide cooking with reusable bags for easy, consistent results, but advise against the first-gen Breville due to no app support. Quick-to-prepare vegetables, dressed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, plus fresh bread, make my weekday meals very healthy and fast to prepare.

Home

I like to live in a tidy and organized cozy apartment. I have automated most tasks for ease. My Roomba cleans when I'm out, LED strips light up as I move (dimly at night), and all plugs shut off at night to save energy.

After facing issues with commercial domotics like Philips Hue's poor iPhone integration and lack of customization, I switched to Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi for its customization capabilities, including writing configurations and Python integrations. My system now uses both WiFi and Zigbee (I have a SkyConnect usb dongle) to communicate with devices like Philips Hue, TP-Link Kasa, and Aqara, among others. It automates my lighting and blinds, dimming lights an hour before bedtime and raising blinds at my alarm, helping me maintain the daily routine.

For music I use Alexa connected to my Harman Kardon speakers, playing low volume lofi coffee shop tunes while working and switching to EDM, rock, and dance at later times.

Productivity

All my activities are stored in two Google Calendars: one for my personal life and one for work. I use Notion Calendar on desktop and iOS. Reclaim.ai manages my calendars and automatically moves meetings to preserve uninterrupted maker time, schedule my recurring 1:1s and allow people to book time with me using a web link.

I use Raycast as my window manager on the laptop, enabling me to assign hotkeys for my most-used apps. This setup allows me to switch between applications without needing to use the mouse. Additionally, I utilize Choosy for managing my links efficiently. It ensures that all links open in the appropriate application or the correct Chrome profile. For instance, links from Slack open directly in the Slack app, bypassing the browser and eliminating unnecessary redirects.

I use a 40% Plank keyboard. I wrote a custom QMK firmware so every key does exactly what I want, without unnecessary lights or sounds. It works consistently on all devices; e.g. the exact same key works consistently on laptop and iPad.

I do most personal writing on Obsidian with Co-pilot plugin. I take personal and shared notes on Notion even though I should probably switch those to Obsidian too. Fabric is a great CLI tool to streamline analyzing and producing content.

Finance

Personal finance is not that complicated, it's composed by: budgeting, spending, saving and investing.

For the budgeting part I use Lunchmoney. It ingests transaction data from the different credit cards using Plaid, and allows me to review all the transactions in a single place, look at trends and make informed decisions.

For the spending part, I utilize various credit cards for specific needs: Bilt for rent, Sapphire Reserve for insurance and foreign currency transactions while traveling, X1 for secure online shopping, and Chase Amazon Prime for Amazon perks. My selection criteria focus on cards that offer savings effortlessly and don't encourage unnecessary spending. I never open a new card for a welcome bonus.

I automate my savings and investments by allocating a fixed monthly sum into ETFs, chosen for their diversified exposure and potential for growth.

Fitness and Health

When I'm not traveling, I prioritize fitness, health and sleep above everything. I sleep 8 to 9 hours every day, the iOS clock app is sending me to bed progressively dimming down lights around me using Home Assistant. I track my sleep and workouts with Oura ring and Apple Watch.

I exercise three or four times a week, opting for a flexible routine to keep things interesting. My workouts include interval running using the Nike Run Club app, weightlifting tracked by the Strong app, and attending group classes for the communal energy boost. I also frequently bike around San Francisco, taking advantage of the city's dry weather.

Recently I used a Dexcom G7 Continuous Glucose Monitor for a month to check if some food I'm eating produces unexpected glucose spikes. The most notable discovery is that a couple of table spoons cider vinegar can significantly reduce glucose spikes (because it slows down digestion).

Other things I recently tried include Prolon, mostly as a willpower challenge, full genome DNA sequencing: I downloaded VCF and CRAM files so every time a doctor needs them I can supply high quality data without having to re-sequence.