Hey,
It’s Pete Matheson with a new issue of Experiments in Progress.
Most of the productivity advice I see solves problems nobody has.
The problems people actually have are boring:
too many messaging apps
an inbox two people are both replying to
tasks in three different places
a 2pm slump on the road
Every single thing on this list exists because it fixed one of those. Nine tools, one drink, and an honest note on which ones you can safely ignore.
⚡My Work & Productivity Shortlist for 2026
This is the actual stuff I open every single day.
⚡ Neutonic: the travel focus drink
When I'm travelling (bad sleep, weird timezone, working from a hotel desk) it's the one thing that reliably gets me into work mode without the coffee jitters.
The productivity drink: 120mg of natural caffeine, zero sugar, and the nootropic bit is where it differs from a normal energy drink
The caffeine-free focus blend sticks: these are the travel MVP. They live in my bag. Mix with water.
Creatine sticks: single-serve packets, easy to keep taking when you're away from home
Source: Beverage Daily
💬 Slack: team comms
The rule that saves me: notifications off for everything except DMs and mentions. Slack becomes a completely different tool the moment you stop treating it as a real-time obligation.
Zero onboarding. Good value. Recommend.
📧 Missive: email
Missive is a collaborative inbox: you can chat with your team inside the email thread, assign conversations, and draft replies together, and it pulls in email, SMS, WhatsApp and social alongside it.
Why it beats forwarding emails around:
Assign an email to someone instead of forwarding it and hoping
Internal comments inside the thread: no more copy-pasting an email into Slack to ask "what do I say here?"
Real-time co-drafting: two people writing the same reply
The honest caveats: it's built for teams. If you're a solo operator, you're paying team pricing for features you can't use — get Spark or Superhuman instead.
👉 If more than one person touches your inbox: Missive.
📱 Beeper: every social message in one place
One inbox. WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger, Instagram DMs, Twitter DMs, Slack, Discord, LinkedIn, Google Chat, SMS and RCS — all of it in one app, on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS.
What actually makes it stick:
Incognito mode: read messages without firing off read receipts
Send Later: schedule messages even on platforms that don't support scheduling
The catch: iMessage only bridges on macOS, and Teams still isn't supported. Setup takes an evening. Worth it.
💻 MacBook Air: the portable laptop
I don't need a Pro. I've stopped pretending I do. For writing, email, calls, light editing and running my entire business — it never breaks a sweat.
Apple put the price up by $200 in June 2026 because of the global memory shortage. Apple also started selling refurbished M5 Airs in June — that's where I'd be looking right now.
If you're buying today: check the refurb store first, or grab a discounted M4 Air. The M5 is faster, but not $200-of-faster for most people.
📲 iPhone Air + Galaxy S26 Ultra: the two phones
The iPhone Air is the one I keep coming back to. It's the thinnest iPhone ever, with a single 48MP camera, a mono speaker and the smallest battery in the 17 lineup.
Battery: fine for normal use, genuinely not fine for gaming. Up to 27 hours of video playback, or 40 with the $99 MagSafe battery pack
eSIM only: it's too thin for a SIM tray, which matters if you travel and buy local SIMs
One speaker: the real daily annoyance, more than the camera
The Galaxy S26 Ultra: 6.9-inch display, 200MP main camera, 5,000mAh battery, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Privacy Display (a hardware-level feature that narrows the viewing angle so people can't read your screen over your shoulder).
📅 Fantastical: calendar
Apple's Calendar is free and fine. Fantastical costs money and I pay it anyway.
Two reasons, and they're both about speed:
Natural language entry: type "Lunch with John at 123 Main Street on Tuesday" and it just becomes an event
Calendar sets: one keystroke to flip between work, personal, and the calendars I only need on filming days
There's a free tier with full calendar views, natural language entry, basic task support, and it's genuinely usable. Premium is where scheduling links, calendar sets and conferencing detection live.
New and quietly brilliant: there's now a Fantastical Connector for Claude, so you can manage your calendar through natural language inside Claude itself.
✅ TickTick: tasks
What you get for the paid plan:
Calendar view + Google Calendar sync:
Habit tracking and a Pomodoro timer built in
Board and timeline views
299 lists, 999 tasks each
🤖 Claude + Gemini: the AI tasks
I use both:
Claude: writing, thinking through problems, anything long or structured. It's the one I'd keep if I had to pick one
Gemini: search-adjacent stuff, anything where being plugged into Google's world helps
🎯 My honest work stack: what to actually steal
If you're drowning in… | Get this |
|---|---|
Team messages everywhere | Slack (with notifications off) |
Emails your team all touch | |
Emails only you touch | Not Missive, Spark or Superhuman |
6 messaging apps on your phone | |
A calendar you fight with | |
Tasks in 3 different places | TickTick |
A laptop that's overkill | |
A phone that's too heavy | |
A phone that does everything | |
The 2pm slump when travelling | |
Best value on this whole list | TickTick |
📱 Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with a friend who’s as obsessed with tech as you are:
Slow WiFi is almost never a "buy a better router" problem. It's a handful of boring fixes nobody tells you about.
So I walked through the lot: from moving your router and switching channels, all the way up to mesh systems, WiFi 6/7 access points, and just running the cable
How to run a proper WiFi survey (and the free app that does it)
Why your WiFi speed and your internet speed are two different numbers
2.4GHz vs 5GHz vs 6GHz: which band you should actually be on
Where your router should really go (it's not where you've put it)
Whether powerline adapters are worth it or a waste of money
Mesh WiFi explained without the marketing nonsense
WiFi 5 vs 6 vs 6E vs 7: what you'd actually notice
and more…
Disclaimer: Some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products or services I believe will add value to you.