The 7 Best NEW AI Productivity Tools 2023
I've been doing a massive deep dive testing out hundreds of new AI tools and so in this video, we're going to go over seven AI tools that I've been using to boost my productivity.
AI tools have been absolutely exploding onto the market recently with lots out there that can automate repetitive tasks and help us become more productive in our daily lives.
The problem is that if you search google or look through AppSumo or Product Hunt it can be really difficult to figure out which are the best AI tools for you and you can end-up spending all your time browsing productivity tools rather than on being productive.
I've been doing a massive deep dive testing out hundreds of new AI tools and so in this video, we're going to go over seven AI tools that I've been using to boost my productivity with a mix of free and freemium tools and do make sure you stick around for a very cool learning and studying AI tool which was just awesome fun to use.
Centered
Okay so the first tool we're going to talk about is called Centered. Now one of the best ways to maximise our productivity is to get into what's called a flow state.
This is where we are completely lazer focused on the task at hand and free from any distractions. And this is the basic idea behind Centered. You can choose from different focus groups, I chose Nir Eyal's undistracted group and also one called book genie.
I then got an AI coach with a very British accent.
My coach blocked notifications and helped me set tasks for my focus session and when you hit the play button you get a focus timer and you can play focus music all to get into that state of flow and get work done. If you navigate away from the desktop app you'll receive an audio nudge from your coach telling you to stay intentional which is pretty cool.
Centered has some nice social elements with the ability to match with a work buddy for added accountability and these work sessions can also be linked to your calendar making you more likely to stick to those deep work habits.
Centered has a generous free tier and then the paid plan is $80/year and includes full spotify integration, unlimited task management and buddy sessions and integrations to project management tools like Asana.
ChatGPT Code Interpreter
The next AI tool we're going to talk about is ChatGPT's Code Interpreter Plugin. OpenAI has been the leading force in the AI space over the last 12-months and with the release of Code Interpreter it's taken things to a whole new level.
So how do you access it and what does it do? Well to switch on code interpreter you'll need a ChatGPT Plus account which costs $20/month and then you'll need to go to settings and beta features and switch on code interpreter. You can then activate it from the GPT4 plugin menu.
And essentially what this does is it enables ChatGPT to use Python script and handle uploads and downloads in a secure environment. The best way to think of code interpreter is it's like having a very junior programmer at you fingertips.
You can now ask ChatGPT to run scripts that run complex mathematical equations, analyse large data sets from csv files and even produce graphs to visualize this data. Code interpreter can do some really cool things with image and video files too like changing the color or size or even producing QR codes that point to your website. This gives you just a small glimpse of what code interpreter can do but now I want to talk about what are my own personal use cases. And the main one that I use code interpreter for is for cleaning up large datasets.
At both Virti and my other businesses I often extract things like website data from google search console or data about how people are using our product in order to identify areas we can improve upon. So for example I extracted a huge file of containing how people were searching for our website and then I uploaded this into code interpreter and was able to get ChatGPT to tidy this up, extract segments of that data and even turn it into a nice graph for the team. I've also been using it to convert files types as I often end up trying to convert one file type to another like turning an Anki deck into an excel file or something like that.
While code interpreter is really great it's still in beta and it doesn't always do exactly what you want. I also found that because the uploaded file and code is held in a temporary storage area if you want to work on something that takes a little while it might ask you to upload a new file which can be a bit irritating.
Make sure you check out my full code interpreter breakdown too.
Clay
And the next tool is called Clay. And I've been using this AI tool because we all know that people matter. But in our busy day-to-day lives, important people and life events sometimes fade into the background.
Clay works a little bit like a personal relationship manager. You start by importing your contact lists across social networks and your address book and then Clay offers a powerful search tool that sifts through those contacts, and provides customizable reminders and notes — all in one place.
Clay then populates each person’s entry with all the relevant information you would need to recall for any future meeting — ranging from their work history to latest tweets to the details on how you met and when you last communicated, among other things.
You also can add notes of your own to each entry, click to activate reminders to follow up with certain people and organize entries into groups. The app supports a command bar, keyboard shortcuts and home screen widgets, as well.
The end result is something that’s not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system.
I found that Clay was at it's most useful when it offered me insights and reminders about my contacts like suggesting catching up with someone I hadn't seen for a while or allowing me to quickly search my contacts for anyone I'd worked with in the NHS who might still be working in the region and Birthday reminders and job updates is another example of helpful data it can send you.
For business I also found it was really helpful. As I do lot's of talks and have lots of meetings it's easy to forget where you might have first met someone and it's time consuming looking up information from LinkedIn about someone you're due to have a meeting with. Clay will integrate with your calendar and I used it to quickly remind myself about people ahead of calls for that added element of personalization.
Clay offers a free tier with 1000 contacts and then has a tiered paid offering starting at $10/month for unlimited contacts and search history
Phantombuster / Bardeen.ai
All right so next up we actually have two tools that I've been using to boost my productivity by automating and optimising my workflows between tools that I use. I'm going to talk through Phatombuster and Bardeen together as although they are technically separate tools I've been using them for very similar use cases.
Let's start with Phantombuster which focuses specifically on automating lead generation as generating engaged leads and then converting these into actual customers is at the core of every good business.
A lead is basically anyone who interacts with your content across socials, visits your website or who you meet at a physical event. The problem is that managing leads, enriching them with data and keeping them interested can be quite messy across various social networks and email systems.
And this is where Phatombuster come in. I've been using it's templates and connections to socials to automate things like exporting contact details from LinkedIn or auto-replying to DMs on twitter.
Phatntombuster has a free 14-day trial and then pricing starts at $56/month for a paid plan.
Bardeen's automation goes even wider allowing you to use AI to create automations between a wide range of tools.
Now at first glance, Bardeen may look like just another automation tool similar to things like Zapier. However it's main differentiator: context, meaning it builds automations based on what’s open on your computer screen.
I found Bardeen pretty easy to use as you can chat with the AI similar to ChatGPT and ask it to create automations. This saved me lots of time over having to search through templates or think about what I wanted to automate.
The AI even goes a step further and will recommend automations based on what you are using in your browser.
For me I found automating things like extracting data from websites into an excel sheet for research and for personal productivity where I was able to create an automation that populated do to tasks across platforms like Asana, Jira and email.
Bardeen has a free tier and then starts at $10/month for premium automations and integrations.
Shiken Chat
Okay so next up we have Shiken AI Chat. Shiken is a popular learning app used by students and professional learners that primarily works a little bit like acros between Quizlet, Kahoot and Notion as you can create your own questions and flashcards, play live games and take notes as well as setting learning goals and diving into mindfulness focus mode to avoid distractions.
Shiken Chat adds an AI-powered personal coach that acts as a tutor or coach for learners and assistant for anyone creating learning content like teachers or people wanting to create their own questions and courses.
I found the Chat interface was really nice with the simple ability to move it around and expand it being a nice feature.
I also found that activating my microphone and using the speech recognition added to the productivity boost and saved me typing time.
Unlike ChatGPT or tools like Copy.ai Shiken Chat is designed for education specifically and the prompt library features some really nice prompts split up into by whether you are learning, creating content or you want to be coached.
For learners prompts range from explaining a topic with the Feynman technique to writing an essay outline and even mimicking a historical character as well as generating active recall questions and lots more.
If you want to be coached there are prompts that turn Shiken Chat into a language role play scenario or it can coach you on anything from productivity to practising an interview.
If I was still revising for medical exams or exams at school this would be insanely useful as it means you can work through some of the practice questions and not have to application switch to google or dive into a book to more deeply understand a topic saving loads of time while reducing the need for an expensive in-person private tutor which I think would make my parents pretty happy.
As I create lots of courses and I'm obsessed with learning the creator tools are also really nice with prompts to quickly generate questions, course outlines and more. You can even generate quiz questions in-bulk from the questions area which saves loads of time if you want to create questions or flashcards in bulk.
I was also able to use the AI system within the focus or mindfulness area which, a bit like Centered, helps keep you in flow state with a mix of nature sounds and mindfulness music and exercises combined with a focus timer.
The AI tools also plug into the notes system too and similar to Notion AI I was able to pretty quickly work within the Chat interface and then copy and save things as notes which could be expanded or summarised with AI note-taking tools.
Shiken itself is free to sign-up to with Shiken Chat AI tools available on the paid tiers which come with a 14-day free trial.
They've also very kindly added in a 55% discount code for blog readers.
Neuronwriter
Next up we have Neuronwriter which is a cross between AI copywriting tools like Jasper and Copy.ai and SEO tools like SurferSEO.
Now if you don;t know what SEO is it's stands for search engine optimization and it's how I've built a number of my businesses to 6-figures quickly without spending any money on paid ads.
When you're starting off creating content that is helpful and which ranks on google helps to get eyes on your product or service. The downside is that content creation is slow and knowing how to rank 1st on google can seem a bit of a dark art.
The way Neuronwriter works is that you enter the title of your blog or the keywords you want to focus on and then it researches the competition and scores your content based on what ranks highly on google already.
The AI tools will also write the content for you. So for example I used it to research a blog post on the best focus apps. I entered the keywords and title and then it showed me the competition. Now I could assign that to a member of my marketing team and set a deadline or in this case I jumped into the editor.
In the editor I can then use the AI to generate an outline for the article and I can then get it to actually write content. Unlike other copywriting tools it will give your content a score out of 100 and as you write and edit this will increase.
A cool feature here is you can quickly pull in common headings used by high ranking articles and questions asked on google which saves loads of time on research.
Without going too far down an SEO rabbit hole here it's a great tool and if you're looking at boosting your content strategy it's well worth taking a look with pricing from E19/month.
Veed AI Tools
AI productivity tool number 7 on the list is VEED which we use all the time for video editing and which has recently added a whole host of AI features they've been rolling out pretty quietly.
If you're not familiar with VEED it's a cloud based video editing platform which is a little bit more accessible than tools like Premier Pro or Final Cut if you want to create or repurpose video content quickly.
We've mainly been using VEED for repurposing content into shorts where AI tools like the auto-subtitle creator are really fast and pretty accurate.
Some of the newer AI video features we've been using include the ability to remove the background from a video, translating the video into other languages and generating background music using AI.
The weirdest AI feature I tried out which I'm not sure I'm 100% down with yet is the eye contact correction feature which moves your eyes with AI to look directly at the camera. Pretty cool and a bit freaky.
I use Premier Pro myself and I have a video editing team but if we want to make some quick shorts or a quick promo video VEED has lots of great features and a very accessible and simple interface which is worth checking out.