We Actually Used These 10 Productivity Tools for Weeks — Here's the Honest Truth
Photo: Wilfredor, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Problem With Most Tool Roundups
Most productivity tool listicles are written by people who spent 20 minutes on a free trial and called it research. You can tell — the reviews are vague, the screenshots are from the marketing page, and the verdict is always some version of "great for teams of all sizes!"
We didn't want to do that. Testing things properly is kind of our whole thing at TryChec, so we put in the actual time. Each tool in this list was used in a realistic work context for at least two weeks. We tracked setup time, measured how long common tasks took before and after adoption, and paid attention to the moments where the tool helped — and the moments where it got in the way.
Here's what we found.
1. Slack — Still the Default, For Better and Worse
Best for: Teams that live in real-time communication Setup friction: Low Hype justified? Mostly, with caveats
Slack is the default workplace chat tool for most US tech companies at this point, and after using it for two weeks against a baseline of email, the speed advantage is real. Async updates that used to involve four-email threads now happen in three messages.
The problem is distraction creep. Slack's notification defaults are aggressive, and the culture it enables — constant availability, rapid responses — can eat into deep work time fast. If your team has the discipline to set clear norms around response expectations, Slack is genuinely excellent. If not, it can make everyone feel busier while getting less done.
Time saved: Roughly 40 minutes/day on communication overhead — but only when channel hygiene is maintained.
2. Notion — Powerful, But You'll Earn It
Best for: Teams that want a single source of truth for docs and projects Setup friction: High Hype justified? Yes, eventually
Notion has a learning curve that feels almost confrontational at first. The blank canvas approach means you can build almost anything — and that freedom is exactly what makes it hard to start. We spent the better part of the first week just figuring out how we wanted to structure things.
Week two was a different story. Once a coherent workspace is set up, Notion genuinely reduces the time spent hunting for information across email, Docs, and Sheets. It's not a tool you'll love immediately, but teams willing to invest the setup time tend to stick with it hard.
Time saved: Negligible in week one. Approximately 30 minutes/day by week three.
3. Linear — The Project Tracker That Doesn't Feel Like a Chore
Best for: Engineering and product teams Setup friction: Low-medium Hype justified? Absolutely
Linear might be the most pleasant project management tool we've ever used. It's fast — keyboard shortcuts everywhere, instant search, no sluggish page loads — and it's opinionated in ways that actually help rather than constrain. Sprint planning that used to take an hour took 25 minutes.
It's not the right fit for non-technical teams (the interface assumes familiarity with developer workflows), but for engineering squads, it's hard to beat.
Time saved: ~1 hour per sprint cycle on planning and status updates.
4. Loom — Async Video Done Right
Best for: Remote teams, anyone who over-schedules meetings Setup friction: Very low Hype justified? Yes
Loom's pitch is simple: record a quick video instead of writing a long explanation or scheduling a meeting. In practice, it works. A three-minute Loom replaced a 30-minute standup on three separate occasions during our test period. The auto-generated transcripts make them searchable and skippable, which removes the biggest friction point of async video.
Time saved: Highly variable, but we eliminated roughly two meetings per week.
5. Reclaim.ai — Smart Scheduling That Actually Learns
Best for: Anyone with a fragmented calendar Setup friction: Medium Hype justified? More than expected
Reclaim automatically blocks time for focus work, habits, and tasks based on your calendar and priorities. It sounds gimmicky until you realize you've gone three days without a two-hour uninterrupted block and you've started accepting every meeting invite reflexively.
The AI scheduling is genuinely good after the first week of calibration. It's not perfect — it occasionally blocks time at weird moments — but it meaningfully increased the amount of deep work time in our week.
Time saved: Not a time saver so much as a time protector. We got about 4 extra hours of focus time per week.
6. Zapier — Automation for Non-Engineers
Best for: Operations, marketing, and anyone managing repetitive cross-tool tasks Setup friction: Medium Hype justified? Yes, within limits
Zapier connects apps and automates workflows without requiring any code. The most useful zaps we built: auto-creating Linear tickets from Slack messages, syncing form submissions to a Notion database, and triggering Slack notifications from calendar events.
The free tier is limited enough to be frustrating, and the pricing jumps quickly once you need multi-step automations. But if you've got repetitive tasks crossing multiple tools, Zapier pays for itself fast.
Time saved: Approximately 45 minutes/day on manual data entry and tool-switching.
7. Superhuman — Premium Email for Email Power Users
Best for: Executives and anyone who processes 100+ emails daily Setup friction: Low (onboarding is genuinely good) Hype justified? Conditionally
Superhuman is expensive ($30/month), fast, and keyboard-first. If you're the kind of person who thinks about email efficiency, you'll love it. If you check email twice a day and mostly use it for newsletters, you won't get your money's worth.
The speed difference over Gmail is real and noticeable. We hit Inbox Zero faster and felt less dread opening the inbox. Whether that's worth the price depends entirely on how central email is to your workday.
Time saved: ~20 minutes/day for high-volume email users.
8. Coda — Notion's More Structured Sibling
Best for: Ops teams, anyone building internal tools Setup friction: High Hype justified? For the right team, yes
Coda sits somewhere between Notion and a lightweight database. It's better than Notion for structured data and automation, but less flexible for freeform docs. We found it most useful for building internal dashboards and lightweight CRM-style trackers.
The learning curve is steep, and it's probably overkill for teams that just need a good wiki. But for operations-heavy teams building repeatable processes, it's surprisingly powerful.
Time saved: Difficult to quantify — it's more about reducing complexity than raw time.
9. Toggl Track — The Simplest Time Tracker That Works
Best for: Freelancers, agencies, anyone billing by the hour Setup friction: Very low Hype justified? Yes
Toggl is unglamorous and effective. One-click time tracking, clean reports, integrations with most project tools. We used it to understand where our actual time was going during the test period, and the data was humbling — and useful.
If you're not tracking time, you're guessing at your productivity. Toggl makes it easy enough that you'll actually do it.
Time saved: Doesn't save time directly, but the visibility it creates typically leads to 15-20% better time allocation within a month.
10. Granola — AI Notes for Back-to-Back Meetings
Best for: Anyone in a lot of meetings Setup friction: Low Hype justified? Surprisingly, yes
Granola runs in the background during meetings and generates structured notes automatically. Unlike full meeting bots (which some participants find intrusive), it works locally on your Mac and doesn't join the call as a visible participant.
The notes aren't perfect, but they're good enough that we stopped dreading the post-meeting "write-up" entirely. For teams with heavy meeting loads, this one's worth trying.
Time saved: ~15 minutes per meeting on note-taking and follow-up summaries.
The Bottom Line
No single tool on this list is magic. What they share is specificity — each one solves a particular kind of friction better than the alternatives in its category. The teams that get the most out of productivity tools aren't the ones that adopt everything; they're the ones that diagnose their actual bottlenecks first, then pick the tool that addresses them.
If you're not sure where your time is actually going, start with Toggl. Everything else follows from knowing what you're actually trying to fix.
