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Overwhelmed? Feel like your business can't run for a day without you? You're not alone.
When you're a solopreneur, everything ends up depending on you. You're the only one who can do the work, answer the email, keep the plates spinning, make the decisions. So you're on the hook every day: nights, weekends, even the vacations you do manage to take. The overwhelm never really lifts.
But being a solopreneur doesn't have to mean doing it all yourself. With the right systems, parts of your business can run without you. That's what gets you your time back, and gives you the freedom to take a real break. And the freedom to do the work you actually want instead of the work you feel stuck doing.
Joe Casabona learned this the hard way. He went from so overwhelmed he had a panic attack to taking 4–6 weeks off a year, worry-free, and he's helped hundreds of solopreneurs build systems that give them their time back.
On Streamlined Solopreneur, each episode gives you one clear idea to help you get your time back — and exactly what to do, so you don't just have another decision to make. Start listening. And you want to take action right now, take the Solopreneur Systems Quiz to know which system you should fix first, and how: https://quiz.streamlined.fm
I've spent a number of the last few episodes telling you that the tools don't matter.
The apps don't matter how you organize your day and spend your time. It is what really
matters. So am I changing course here by telling you my essential devices, apps,
and techniques? I don't think so. And here's why. Hey everybody.
Welcome to another episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur, the show that helps you
save 25 hours every month so you can spend your time doing what you want instead
of being chained to your desk. I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and I got such a fantastic
question from a friend and somebody on my mailing list that I had to turn it into
a podcast episode. He responded to one of my emails and said, what are your top three
recommendations in the following categories? Essential tech and devices, essential
programs and apps and essential techniques for time and productivity management.
He then said, ergo, vis-a-vis concurrently reference acknowledged, if you had 30
seconds to make me better at being productive, what are the top points you'd hit?
Now, I do touch on this, especially in the techniques portion, because that is, I
believe, where the magic happens.
so I'm going to go through my favorite tech and devices. Yours could be different,
but these are what's really important to me.
And the first one is my phone. Now, I, as I record this, as I've spent a few days
with the iPhone duo, I do a lot of stuff from my phone. I think it's a great piece
of technology. I try to limit the amount of times I use it, especially for mindless
stuff. But with the iPhone duo, it is allowing me to cut both my Kindle and my iPad
when I travel. So I'm reading a lot more on it. I am consuming more content on it.
And because it has
Apple Pencil support,
I am writing more notes on it. The screen is, the inner screen especially is really
great for writing. I'm gonna do a, uh, fuller
kinda writeup on this, uh, in the near future.
but if you are an Instagram user, I am posting regular stories and reels over there.
Uh, so you can find me. I am Joe Casabona on Instagram. I am back on Instagram. I'll
do an episode about that as well. But, uh, if you're watching the video, QR code
is on the screen. Otherwise I will have a link in the description. Okay. So anyway,
I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the iPhone duo, but ultimately it is
a great place to display information. It is very, uh, near and dear to my heart because
I can read and consume and create content on it. Uh, and the, the bigger screen is
just fantastic. So that is an essential device for me. Now,
my Apple Watch
is also an
essential device for me. This might cut against my phone, but I like that my watch
is, uh, has a cellular plan on it because I can leave my phone at home if I want
to disconnect, and I can record notes and do a bunch of other things on it. Listen
to music, right? I think that the watch allows me to disconnect from my phone when
I want to.
So I don't always need to have my phone on me. Maybe that's why I have a better relationship
with my phone. Like, I don't straight up hate it 'cause I feel like I need it. But
my watch is super essential because it allows me to stay connected in the ways I
want to stay connected.
Uh, again, like recording, uh, voice notes or making sure that my kids' schools or
my wife or my parents can get ahold of me if and when they need to. And I can still
listen to music. I've been, I've been taking,
uh, walks without headphones a lot more lately. But the point being
my watch has made it so I don't
rely on my phone as much. So that is an essential piece of technology for me as well.
And the third one, not really technology, not really devices, but super essential.
Uh, I call these the analogs.
So this is whatever book I'm reading and a Field notes notebook. As I record this,
I am wrapping up reading my friend Matt Stanos book, speak Less, get More. Uh, I
always have a physical book in my sling bag or my backpack. I just,
there's nothing more satisfying than being able to close a book when you're done
reading. It may,
maybe with the iPhone do all, I'll have that same satisfaction, but I sincerely doubt
it. So that is, uh, really essential to me. And then a field Notes notebook. Sometimes
I don't wanna pull out my phone, right? Sometimes I put my phone in my bag. I don't
feel like talking to my watch. Having a pen and notebook on me is absolutely essential.
There is something fantastic about tactile, uh, writing and, and note taking.
Now, in this segment, I could have also said like, my continuous glucose monitor,
'cause I have type two diabetes or my Aura ring. But I think in both of those cases,
those are nice to haves.
The CGM has taught me a lot about how food affects my blood sugar, especially because
I have type two diabetes, but also I'm not on insulin.
my diabetes is pretty well managed.
it's very unlikely that I will get too low.
if I couldn't afford my CGM tomorrow, uh, I would be pricking my finger more often
than I'd like, but it is not completely essential for me.
Uh, okay, so let's move to essential apps.
The apps I'm gonna pick here are the ones that I use the most in all contexts. So,
uh, like there's one, uh, e Camm, which is what I'm using to show these overlays
and what I'm using to record this. And basically everything I do as long as I'm recording
on my computer. But Eec Camm works decidedly on my computer, right? So,
uh, if I'm picking essential apps here, I am picking apps that work
on my phone, on my computer, on my iPad. So Ecamm is absolutely essential for me
when I'm producing content.
Uh, and
just wanted to point that out because I love Ecamm. Shout out to ecamm ecamm.com/joe
is my affiliate link. Um, so that, I just wanted to get that outta the way really
quick. 'cause I love Ecamm. Uh, and it's like just number four on this list.
Uh, number one is obsidian. It's my notes, my second brain, if you will, uh, second
Brain in the more traditional way, not like the way that people are using AI to describe
their second brain. I hate to break it to you, but if AI is your second brain, then
you are losing brain cells.
There's no more plain way to put it.
So obsidian is my second brain in the sense that
any thought worth keeping or
not even worth keeping, uh, goes into obsidian for me to process later.
So
a planning app for me. It's a research app for me. Uh, the mobile app has gotten
so much better over the past year.
I think if I had recorded this last year, obsidian wouldn't be on the list
because using it on mobile was a chore. And I was actually just using Apple Notes,
but it's gotten so much better.
Uh, and so it also has some pretty good integrations. And because
it's not an open source platform, but it uses open technology, uh, htm, LCSS and
JavaScript.
It's very easy for me to use AI to vibe code, my own plugins, uh, that
use to improve the overall experience of obsidian across platform for me. So I pay,
four bucks a month for Obsidian Sync, which means that my, uh, vaults are going to
be the same no matter what device I am on. And that is excellent. So, obsidian number
one for me,
very close. Second is
Todoist is where everything I have to do goes.
It is my longtime task manager app. I should, I guess, disclose here that at some
point, uh, Todoist was a sponsor of mine, uh, and maybe in the future, but I'd be
talking about them either way. I love Todoist. It's a great app. And, um,
you know,
picking this over like a more traditional calendar app too. Like Fantastical is an
incredible app. It's like maybe five or six for me on this list. But
if my calendar app went away, calendar events do show up in Todoist. So
if I wanna get a snapshot of what my day looks like,
I can go into Todoist and
it, like, obsidian works everywhere. Plus the web actually.
Uh, so it has like, uh, AI connectors and you can easily move things around and get
stuff in there with the right context. It has Ramble, which is one of my absolute
favorite features. It's like the,
I guess the second most common way I'm adding Tasks
Todoist now, because
is just kind of like going into the emails I've read and pulling out stuff and putting
it in, uh, to projects for me
and for me to review. So, uh, I don't have to remember to do that stuff. It's a little
bit over zealous, right? Like Claude is a little bit over zealous, but I'd rather
it be overzealous than under log things that need to be logged, so to-do is absolutely
essential for me. And Whisper Memos is number three. Uh, voice notes, voice recordings,
uh, has Zapier and MCP,
uh, AI integration,
but it works on my watch. And so I press the action button, I start talking into
my watch, and then everything gets sent to Obsidian. It gets sent
email, and to Zapier and Obsidian.
So I can reasonably expect that when I talk
at length to my watch,
those thoughts will be captured and put someplace where I will find them. So, whisper
Memos is great. I know a lot of people love Whisper Flow, but Whisper Memos is one
of the few apps I have found that works independently on the watch from the phone,
which means that I can leave my phone at home and still capture voice notes
and get a good transcription and summary and then do stuff with them, right? Like
I think the Voice Recorder app
on
iOS and watchOS works independent of the phone, but then it's a recording that I
can't, that nothing happens automatically with. So
Whisper memos, I will happily
keep paying for,
uh, now I said playing because one of the like subtextual, uh, points that my friend
Steve made in this email, uh, was about games. Just like pocket games, something
to pull out. Um, so I wanted to mention a couple of them here 'cause I thought they
would be fun. Marvel Snap was a fun one for me. It was too time consuming. I would
spend too much time playing that game.
Tro also so fun. But my screen time went way, way up
playing both Marvel Snap and Tro. Those are fine for like Christmas breaks.
Uh,
like to take it easy and not work at all on Christmas break. Um, we let the kids
have too much screen time over Christmas break 'cause it's just like winter and we're
having fun and you know, we're just chilling out. But during the normal course of
the year, I don't like having those apps on my phone because they are too time consuming
for me.
So I usually do
once a game,
once a day games. Now, uh, Wordle Connections and Immaculate Grid. Immaculate Grid
is a baseball specific game. Um, it's really humbling. I think I know a lot about
baseball, uh, and Immaculate Grid and shout out my friends Mike Paccione and Jason
Resnick. Uh, we're like in a group chat where we share our immaculate grids. Um,
Mike Paccione especially just like shows me I don't know anything compared to him.
Um, and then, uh, I also like playing Hank Greens four by three. Uh, and then History
Daily and New York Times both have like these history
quizzes that I like playing. Uh, I also enjoy cross play. Uh, so I'll play the computer,
but I also have like games with real people going. And it, what's nice about those
is like when you're playing a real person,
you go and then you have to wait for them to go. So you can't just spend all of your
time
in that app. So
big fan of those games, those are mainly the ones I play. Um, not that
again, Marvel Snap is so fun and I love putting the decks together. Uh, it's
like a turn based card game for Marvel characters, and I love that. But it's definitely
something that took up far too much of my time. So,
um,
even with like the screen time limits, right? Like
I think I need to get a better app, right? Because like, just the default iOS screen
time lets you ignore the limit, which makes the limit pointless.
So,
uh,
you know, maybe I use screen time plus so I can't ignore the limit or whatever. Uh,
or like, lets me do like five more minutes so I can finish whatever game I'm playing,
right? Because if it like,
well, let's neither here nor there, right?
the screen time kicks in while you're in the middle of a game, that's frustrating.
Um, but maybe necessary for me. Okay, let's move on to techniques. And this is really
the question I was really excited
that Steve asked, because this is really
of everything I talk about, these techniques are the thing that will make the most
impact for you as a solopreneur. I just gave a talk at Momentum conference a couple
weeks ago,
and these things I talked about were things that people were excited about, right?
There was a whole day basically on using ai, but using AI to take stuff off your
plate without doing the things that I talked about is just, it's like kind of empty
calories, right? It's like eating cake or drinking juice, uh, or, or like drinking
soda,
you're doing something, but you aren't necessarily moving the chains forward without
understanding how you work. So these are my essential techniques for time and productivity
management. The first one
is weekly planning.
Every Sunday I plan my week. I review my tasks, my appointments, and my notes,
and I look through everything. I move appointments around. If my day is super disjointed,
I will cancel meetings or, uh, ask people to move meetings so that I can block them
closer together. This is essential for me.
Recently, I didn't plan my week
and I was lost that whole, I was like traveling. And so I didn't get home until Tuesday.
And so I thought, oh, you know, I'll do the most essential stuff. I was lost.
So like knowing, having a game plan makes you more productive.
I knew today what I would be doing today is a recording day for me.
And so I knew what I would be doing. So weekly planning is number one. Number two
is task journaling.
I have, I
have made an app called Daily three Task Journal. I'll put it in the description
below. It's at streamlined fm slash app. You can join the beta for free. Uh, but
it
allows me to put my three tasks in and it has two way sync with Todoist. So I can
actually pull from my Todoist tasks for the day, uh, and then allows me to reflect
on how the day went, what distracted me, and when I felt most productive. I have
added shortcuts. So it's easy for me to export those things into something like my,
um, my daily note in obsidian if I want to. But this is really important because
checking in with yourself regularly and seeing how your day shifts and what you're
getting done and where you might be distracted allows you to reassess and optimize,
especially as you come up to that weekly planning,
right? Where you're like, okay, well I haven't been getting much done in the mornings
lately, so I'm gonna rework my day and maybe I'll make that my meeting time or whatever.
And then number three is time boxing. I stack my meetings.
I block off my best times so that nobody can meet with me during those times.
I put all of my meetings pretty much in the afternoon, definitely after 11:00 AM
because my most sacred hours are between 7:00 AM and 11:00 AM.
And so I don't want anybody interrupting me during those times.
So
I block my time off, I make sure I have a solid three or four hours each day to do
real work
because that's how I get stuff done.
So that's it. Those are my three techniques. Now if you are looking at these techniques
and you're wondering,
how do I figure out how to plan my week, my week is too disjointed. If you need some
help,
I want you to book a free strategy call with me. No strings attached.
You can scan the QR code on screen, click the link in the description below, or head
over to streamlined
fm slash strategy.
We'll chat for a little bit
then I will think about the best way I can help you.
So that's what I would strongly recommend. If you are struggling to get appreciable
work done in a week, if you feel like you're constantly putting out fires or yeah,
if you don't like the tools you use,
we can chat and I will come up with a plan for you
because ultimately
how you work and optimizing your work week makes you more productive, frees up your
time, sees where you can delete, automate, and delegate so that you can save 25 hours
per month. So you can spend time the way you want.
So you can go to your kid's soccer game
or help out with the drama club,
go see a movie, or just spend some extra time reading. So,
uh, again, that's over at streamlined fm slash strategy. That's streamlined with
a d streamlined FM slash strategy. But that's it for this episode of the Streamlined
Solopreneur. Thank you so much for listening or watching. If you are on YouTube,
leave a comment below and let me know what are your essential apps. If you're not,
you can head over to streamlined feedback.com
and let me know what are your essential apps, hardware, or techniques. I'd love to
hear from you. But that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening, and
until next time,
I hope you find some space in your week.