Unlock the Secrets of Top Productivity Tools | Francesco D'Alessio | Glasp Talk #22
This is the twenty-second session of Glasp Talk!
Glasp Talk delves deep into intimate interviews with luminaries from various fields, unraveling their genuine emotions, experiences, and the stories behind them.
Today's guest is Francesco D'Alessio, the founder and host of Tool Finder, formerly known as Keep Productive, a popular YouTube channel and website that helps individuals discover the best productivity tools to enhance their lives and work. With over a decade of experience and a community of over 400,000 subscribers, Francesco has become a trusted source for professionals and individuals looking to optimize their workflows.
In this interview, Francesco shares his journey from starting his YouTube channel in college to becoming a renowned expert in productivity tools. He discusses the decision to rebrand Keep Productive to Tool Finder, the importance of expanding beyond productivity to include work and life management software, and his approach to reviewing hundreds of apps to find the best fit for various needs. Francesco also provides valuable insights on how AI is shaping the future of productivity tools, the challenges of staying unbiased while reviewing, and his vision for creating innovative productivity tools that truly make a difference. Join us as we explore Francesco D'Alessio's unique path and thoughtful perspectives on the evolving landscape of productivity and technology.
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Transcripts
Glasp: Welcome back to Glasp Talk! Today, we are very excited to have Francesco D'Alessio with us. Francesco is the founder and host of Tool Finder, AKA Keep Productive, a YouTube channel and website that helps people discover the best productivity tools to enhance their lives and work. With over a decade of experience and over 400,000 subscribers, Francesco has become a trusted source for professionals and individuals looking to optimize their workflow. Beyond YouTube, he has helped numerous tech startups by sharing his expertise in marketing and content creation. So, let's dive into his journey and insights on the future of productivity. Thank you for joining us today, Francesco.
Francesco: Thank you very much, guys, for having me. I really appreciate it.
Glasp: Thank you. So, first of all, it seems like you started your YouTube channel when you were a college student, right? Back in 2014. I wonder, why did you choose productivity tools at the time? Was there any trigger or turning point in your life?
Francesco: Yeah, that's a good question because productivity apps are quite a specific thing that people tend to go after. Started it when I was in college and high school, I was helping my teachers with productivity applications and software on their computers—just in how to find things, and how to organize things. I thought this was probably something I was quite good at because I was helping all these different teachers. And then what happened was, I went away and started looking at different types of applications in productivity software. I found I really liked the differences between these applications and helping people choose the perfect one for them. It was only a few years later that I decided, why don't I start a YouTube channel to help people categorize these and narrow down the options? Which one's best for them? Because from the surface, a lot of these productivity applications look very much the same. Like a note-taking application can do the same thing as another note-taking application, but there are some small differences between them. So, I jumped into doing videos, and 10 years later, I'm still helping people define the differences between their applications.
Glasp: That's really beautiful. I love watching your YouTube videos and the website to find interesting tools. Thank you for sharing.
Francesco: Thank you for watching.
Glasp: By the way, did you change the name from Keep Productive to Tool Finder?
Francesco: Yes, we did. That was quite a big move. We decided that one of the things we want to do is not just help people with productivity but also with work software and life management software, which isn't only dedicated to productivity. This sort of helps us expand beyond productivity but still allows us to cover productivity and other tools. It's a big change, but one that I think makes more sense for the future.
Glasp: Yeah, it makes sense. But just curious, you're reviewing many software—note-taking apps, knowledge management tools—so you know pretty much all of those categories and products, right? You could combine all the insights and experience to make your product. So, why don't you do that?
Francesco: Yeah, so that was one of the problems because I had created so many videos over the years. I just got to this point where I was like, how can I rent out my brain to other people? Because I was like, I know I'm very weird at this point; I know probably 700 productivity app logos instantly, you know what I mean? But I don't want to rely on my brain to create content. So, what we did with Tool Finder is we made a database of them. What we're trying to do is make it so someone can go into the application, find their problem, and find a solution to it. That's one of the biggest problems. We're sort of using things like artificial intelligence and smarter database structures to make that possible, not making it all about me, if you know what I mean. We provide a tool that helps them find tools.
Glasp: I see. By the way, you review so many tools, right? I really wonder how you find these tools. I mean, you cover new tools, not just famous ones like Notion or Obsidian, but also very niche and new tools. I'm curious how you always discover these tools. Do you have someone helping you?
Francesco: No, no, no. I spend too much time on things like Product Hunt and Twitter. I have lots of different keywords set up for Google Alerts for new productivity tools. I also have an amazing community that pings me about new apps all the time. I think it comes from an interest as well. I'm quite interested in marketing, sales, and startups, so I'm always finding tools and constantly on the pulse of new apps. It's kind of a problem, though, isn't it?
Glasp: Yes, that's productive!
Francesco: Not productive, not productive. But yeah, would you mind if I ask you how you discovered Glasp? Because Glasp became somewhat famous after YouTube Summary went viral. Did you already know Glasp before that, or did someone recommend it to you?
Francesco: That's a good one. You know, I think I don't know what it was exactly because there are so many apps, but I was in 2019 or 2021—I can't remember which one it was—I recorded a series with Anne-Laure Le Cunff about knowledge management. I think she may have—I don't even know whether we were just browsing which apps we had or something like that—and I saw Glasp. Maybe that wasn't the first time I saw it, but I remember that's when it stuck for me. That's when I started exploring you guys a bit more and looking into Glasp.
Glasp: Thank you so much! I didn't know that. You wrote a review for Glasp on Medium and also made a video on YouTube. That really helps us. Thanks so much!
Francesco: Thank you. I need to update it.
Glasp: Not at all! By the way, I think you review hundreds of products, right? Daily basis, in total. Also, daily, you review many tools. I wonder how you minimize or lower your bias when you review an application. Do you have a strategy or workflow, like using a tool for at least two weeks or something, to better understand it? Because, you know, you have preferences, right? Let's say you use Notion or Obsidian, then if you try another tool, you might think, "Ah, this UI/UX doesn't work for me." Do you have a strategy to reduce the bias when reviewing products?
Francesco: It's quite tricky because there are so many apps, and I do have my favorites. But I sort of go on two principles. The first of those is always being the most trustworthy person to recommend the tools for the right person. For example, if somebody emails me and says, "Francesco, I need a productivity app for X, Y, and Z situation," what I try and do is probe them with various questions like, "What is your current situation? What's your budget? Are you working in a team or as an individual?" I try to narrow down the solution for them to pick the best tool for them. The way I bake that into the reviews is always to have in mind the concept of who this is best for and their situation. One tool could be great for individuals who are busy professionals, but another could be better for small teams working in sales and marketing. I'm always trying to think of the end user as much as I can.
The second principle is to keep my own productivity system of apps as small as possible. The idea behind that is to always be in the mindset of picking an app for as long as possible. What people tend to do—running a site like Tool Finder—is jump between applications. They see a new app, download it, and then two weeks later, they're on another application that does something slightly different. I try to instill those principles in how I choose productivity apps and try to help people pick for the long term. Even though it's quite hard because you've got to do your research, which is so important. So, yeah, that's how I go about the bias side of stuff.
Glasp: I see, yeah, that totally makes sense. At the same time, I'm curious, you review many tools, and I think we already know what kind of tools you are using. But for our audience, I'd like to ask, after so many reviews and comparing many tools, what work or tools did you choose for each category, like note-taking, knowledge management, or to-do lists? Could you share the tools you use?
Francesco: Sure, yeah. The tool I decided to use is Todoist for task management, just because I find the application is great for capturing my day. I'm always driving in the car or with my kids, and trying to capture a task or a note or a link quickly is part of the game because I want to be able to remember it or process it for later. I love the Siri integration and things like that. It's also got some good, more recent calendar abilities that I like.
For note-taking, I don't take a great deal. The way I typically note-take is by capturing documents that are important to me. For example, a medical thing that came through the post, and I want to be able to scan it in. So, I typically use Evernote for that still. Then, if I'm journaling, which is the second part of my note-taking—I don't really take notes; I journal more about how I'm doing or do week reviews, typically on a Thursday—I'll use something like Notion for that. It's a bit like Google Documents; it's quite easy just to start writing and let your mind wander.
It's strange, though, with those two applications. I use them, but I don't use them in a very structured sense; I just try and get the information in. Because I'm in the role that I'm in, I sort of do something—I don't know whether it's a real thing—sort of progressive learning where anything that I feel comes out of journaling that's useful, I try to implement as fast as I can if that makes sense. I make a mistake and learn from it versus writing down information about it so that my journal constantly gets better, I guess. So, those are my two note-taking apps: Evernote and Notion, where I use them in two different situations. Evernote is more of a filing cabinet, and Notion is more of a journal/planner app.
For the calendar, I don't really have a dedicated calendar app. I use Google Calendar because they're so similar a lot of the time that I never have one installed where I'm like, "Okay, I'll go with that one." They're always shutting down, too. Once I started liking a calendar app, they shut down.
Then, I use Superhuman for email, which is an email application because I spend quite a long time every day on email. That helps me do things. So, I don't have a lot of apps—probably five. I don't have a huge number, but for the average person, it's quite a lot. But yeah, those are the ones I go for in my daily routine.
Glasp: I see. And how about the tools you use within your team or with your clients? Do you use some tools for collaboration?
Francesco: Yeah, for meeting agendas and notes, we use Notion. Weirdly, because there's only me and Carl, who's the developer—there are only two of us—we use WhatsApp. So it's not very formalized; we don't use Slack or anything like that because we don't necessarily need it. Occasionally, we'll use Todoist for adding tasks, but it's very rare. We really try to keep things as slim as possible. I think it's because we're moving so fast at the moment that we don't really have a structure for what we're doing yet. Carl only joined probably a month ago full-time, so we're still working out the processes and what apps we actually need as a team if that makes sense.
Glasp: Thank you. How about when writing content? For instance, writing for Tool Finder, like web articles. When you write a draft, where do you write it, and where do you publish it?
Francesco: We use—there's no fun writing app that we use for this—Contentful, which is a content management system. It's very boring looking, but it gets the job done. I do use ChatGPT quite a lot across my day because if I've got a journal entry or a task that's monotonous to do, like resizing headers or something like that, I'll use it quite a lot during the day as an assistant tool. But obviously, I think everyone tends to use that application these days to try and get a few things done.
Glasp: Regarding AI, you mentioned AI. I think nowadays any software developer can use OpenAI through API and so on. That means, generally speaking, that most productivity tools have seen productivity increase thanks to AI. The differences between tools might be less compared to the past. How do you think AI will impact productivity tools?
Francesco: I think this is the first wave of artificial intelligence. I always refer to it as a car analogy. Think of a car: the chassis, which is the body around the car, is the productivity tool, and now we've got a brand new engine, which is AI. Once you put a new engine in, you can change it out whenever, but obviously, if you put a Ferrari engine in, it's going to do a lot more; that car is going to go a lot faster. If you put a Ford engine—I’m trying to think of a less impressive car—then it's not going to go as fast, is it?
We have to think of the initial wave of productivity apps as being very cautious because when AI came out, the first 12 months were chaotic. A lot of companies were just starting quickly and trying to build something that wasn't very well thought out. Now, everything's a lot more established, and those who are going to be in the AI game are probably going to be in it a lot longer now because the other companies have drowned or have not been able to survive.
I think the next big wave in artificial intelligence is around the agents of things. When we think about our workday, there's a structure: when you get up, you sort of go to work, and when you take a break, you're not doing any work. When you finish your day, you clock out. We typically have a structure where nothing's happening in that time period. I think AI agents are going to fill that time for us, allowing us to do more. A lot of our work will begin to be tailored towards AI agents.
Here's an example: I think when you wake up, you'll be met with a report, a bunch of research, or a bunch of insights or scraping of information that basically allows you to start your work for the day. The AI agent overnight will have done a bunch of work for you, and you'll be passing over that information. For a lawyer, that could be compiling a bunch of PDFs ready to send to clients or preparing stuff for you to review, ready for sending out.
And then, when you think about lunchtime, you'll prompt a bunch of things to go and do during your lunch hour. When you come back, you're reactional. I think it will be this constant cycle of people getting used to having a true assistant, a true additional person that they have to manage. The next wave is about productivity tools taking the administration outside of their work and focusing on things being done for you during that time period—whether that's productivity tools or other applications. I think productivity itself is going to turn a corner where we don't think about organizing ourselves; we think about doing more or doing less, depending on how much we want to do, which is a good problem to have.
Glasp: Yeah, I see. So, related to that, how do you define productivity then? Because people are pursuing productivity tools, but it has many aspects, right? People want to increase effectiveness, and efficiency, speed up, do more, or reduce costs. How do you define productivity, and why is it important for people?
Francesco: It's a tough question, but I think it's a really interesting one because everything's shifting toward productivity becoming more of a mindfulness activity, which is really good. You think about productivity now: it's about the manual work of organizing your day, which is unproductive in itself but also productive. If AI can do that for us, then the act of being productive will be about mindfulness. It could be somebody planning their day and reflecting on their week, bringing together their Glasp highlights, you know what I mean? It could be about that being much more of a mindful task and actually a productive one, which is a good thing. If we're communicating with agents a lot during the day and those tasks are being done for us by assistants, then how you reflect on your day will become much more of a productivity habit. That's how I see it.
Glasp: Yeah, this is a big question, right? People are preparing; AI is coming out, maybe a super agent is coming out, but people are still struggling with productivity.
Francesco: Yeah, mindfulness is an interesting point, I think. It's going to be much more important for people to see how they think about things, which will be helpful for you guys, of course. People will get a lot more philosophical about work, I think.
Glasp: Yeah, I think so, too. I'm just excited about the future—how people define productivity and being productive. I think, related to this question, many people are pursuing productivity or productivity tools, but later on, they notice, "Oh, this is not productive." It could be due to two main things: either the productivity tool has a problem, or the people using it have a problem. How do you think about it?
Francesco: Yeah, like, sometimes people do get sort of... So here's an example: on YouTube, if you search for "bullet journal covers," it's the front cover of your bullet journal, but people spend hours making these beautiful designs on the cover and inside of the notebook. They're really beautiful, but is that productive? It's a difficult question because, in a way, it is productive to have the book and start using it, but it's whether that's actually productive for you.
Another thought is, if you look at someone who reads a book from start to finish and someone who listens to the audiobook from start to finish, did that audiobook listener read the book or not? That's more of a moral question of, "Okay, what do we define as reading a book? What do we define as not reading a book?"
I think the real test for people is every single week, you should be saying, "How much time did I actually spend working? How much time did I actually take myself away from productivity applications?" I think if you're spending 20 to 30 minutes a week pruning your productivity app and making it better or organizing yourself, that's a good target or limit to aim for. If you spend more than that, the time it's saving you might be wasting the same amount of time, so you need to be able to look at the input-output of it.
Glasp: Right, yeah. Sorry for asking tough questions, but yeah...
Francesco: No, it's good. It's a very smart podcast, so...
Glasp: Yeah, I hope our audience likes it. At least, we love it!
Francesco: Yeah.
Glasp: You know, you review so many tools, but some people start making productivity apps, and in a year or two, they shut down. Do you have any common points or any common pitfalls you see in productivity apps when they start? Maybe you think, "Oh, this is going to be successful," or "This might shut down in a few years."
Francesco: Yeah, it's kind of a turnover, right? It's tricky because even this week, I think three productivity applications shut down. It's getting more common, and I think it's probably because you have to differentiate your app from other apps. I see them all, and you need to have two or three things that are really different between those apps that make them more useful than the others or more useful to the use case of people. At the moment, it seems like I'm getting a new daily planner application every single week to look at or review. It's one of those where there's a trend in the market, people jump on it, and then they don't know how to differentiate themselves from other people. It's a really hard one. It's such a shame when these apps shut down, but you need to find something different. It's very tricky.
Glasp: Makes sense. Many productivity tools start building, but they struggle with monetizing or marketing, and then maybe in three years, they shut down. It's pretty common. Do you have any advice, not only for us but for productivity tool creators, on how to root their product in people's daily lives so it's used and how to market it?
Francesco: That's a good question. I'm going to say, get your app on Tool Finder to start.
Glasp: Oh yeah, of course, that's the first one.
Francesco: I think it's like, we launched a productivity application about two years ago called Bento, and one of the things we found at the start is that we had to have an opinion. If you have an opinion about how something's done, you can find an audience. Our opinion at the time was that people should be doing quality tasks, not quantity tasks. So, we created a system that limits you to three tasks a day, and you're not allowed to add any more tasks. People loved it because it gave them a focus on what they needed to do. We're rebuilding the application right now, but I think you have to have an opinion about the experience. We're also launching another app at the moment called Scram Planning, and what we found is that Scrum Agile meetings that you use for estimation are boring. All the apps and software out there are boring, so our opinion is we want to make it fun. If you can go in with an opinion, you can start tailoring the marketing around that opinion and find the people who are either annoyed at what that opinion is or like your opinion. You can build on it.
I guess with you guys, it's that the ability to share knowledge is not great out there, and you want to try and solve that, right?
Glasp: Yeah, definitely.
Francesco: So, you're doing a good job!
Glasp: Thanks so much! And in that sense, what kind of platform or where do you think is the best to distribute or market the product? You're doing Tool Finder, a website, a web application, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn, right? From your experience, what works the best? Do you have any ideas?
Francesco: Yeah, I mean, Product Hunt is a very good website for launching at all. That's probably a great starting point, just to get the tool out there and in the wild. It depends on what your audience is. If you have an audience that's focused on business customers, then LinkedIn, networking events, and things like that can be great ways to get out there. It really depends on your audience. I think, obviously, for people in the knowledge space, these knowledge applications are great when you look at Reddit and community creators who have individual knowledge management communities, and YouTubers. I used to spend a lot of time doing YouTube influencer marketing when it first started. I spent about three or four years doing it.
I used to work for a company that sold Post-it notes with different languages on them, translated, so you could stick them on items around the house. It was very good. The best way is to find an influencer, not necessarily pay for it, but work with them in a long-term basis. Find an influencer on YouTube that's aligned with your values and try to find a common ground where you can have a long-term relationship. That's always a really good strategy these days. There are so many different ways of doing it these days.
Glasp: Thanks so much. Yeah, a long-term relationship with creators and influencers helps to distribute the product to the right people. That makes sense. At the same time, I'm curious, what's happening nowadays in productivity tools? In many spaces, like note-taking, project management, personal knowledge management, and so on, in each topic, I think there are some trends, right? Let's say, in the note-taking case, Obsidian is quite popular now because it works as a local app, and the data is theirs, which is good. For other tools, like open-source products, users can trust them. Do you see these kinds of trends in each topic or segment nowadays?
Francesco: Oh yeah, it's crazy. It seems like every couple of months, there's a big focus and a big change. The initial PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) wave was very big because people were looking for something different from note-taking apps. Then, like you said, the local-first, open-source, markdown applications had their wave. It happens in task management as well. As I said, daily planners are sort of a more advanced to-do list application, but they've grown as well.
Yeah, I've seen it all the time. I think even in the future, obviously, we're getting this little bit of AI note-taking at the moment, but I don't think notes are a very personal experience. Especially in the PKM market, when you've got people who have their journal, their ideas, their thoughts, and they like local-first because of the security element of it where it's not sort of damaging anything else.
So, that's where I think the PKM space will have a lot more benefit when there are local AI systems involved. If you can plug your notes into a local AI, there's less risk of your notes being abused or something happening with them. I think the next big wave in PKM will be local AI, and it will be connecting your engine with your chassis, but as a user, which I think will be really interesting.
Glasp: Interesting. And you use an analogy with cars. I saw you've been a fan of Ferrari since 1996 or 1994.
Francesco: Yeah, when I was born!
Glasp: That's amazing, not a day. By the way, besides productivity, how do you consume information? How do you get information? Do you read books, read web articles, or subscribe to newsletters? I'm curious about your information-consuming process.
Francesco: I watch a lot of YouTube videos, but I don't actually have social media on my phone because I don't like to consume it as I go about my day. I go on Twitter sometimes, and obviously, for my job, I'm always in the social media realm with YouTube and things like that. Mostly, I consume video because I quite like how it presents itself. If I'm consuming information as well, if I have a problem or want to talk through something naturally, I'll use ChatGPT to unpack a problem across my day. But I try to keep my information diet as slim as I can, just so it's not too intense during the day.
Glasp: That makes sense. Do you have something you want to do in the future now? Like, are there any things you're focusing on or want to do in the future, whether as a person or anything?
Francesco: I would love to create a set of my own productivity tools and software. I think we're at the start of that journey. We've got Bento, and we're going to launch ScramPlanning.com, but I would love to carry this journey on and create this series of productivity tools. It would be so cool because I'm so opinionated about the category, and I'd love to be able to try and pick out trends and build them. So yeah, I'm moving away from being a creator to being a software developer—not that I'm a developer, but building software development—just building apps and tools. So yeah, I think it's an exciting next part of the journey.
Glasp: Very much looking forward to seeing it and using it, for sure.
Francesco: Thank you, definitely.
Glasp: Thank you so much. I asked a bit before, but do you have any advice for creators—like those creating productivity tools or marketing? Because our audience wants to know your thoughts on being a creator, also how to distribute, and what kind of things they should start with first.
Francesco: In terms of people building apps, that's a good question. It's tricky to launch nowadays because it's so noisy, but I think it's all about establishing a different approach to what everyone else is doing. You can be on all the social media sites, but you need to have something that's different from other people. I'm sure it's how you guys have built up—having a close engagement with your community as much as you can. Showing yourself as a team, as a founder, is a good way to do that and start reaching out. There's so much stuff you can do; it's almost like picking the right ones to run with, isn't it?
Glasp: Yeah, that's true. Do you have some advice for people who want to be more productive? You already touched on it a little bit, but is simplicity the best thing, or are there any other ways to advise those people?
Francesco: I think something that's really underrated—and I think there will be a big trend in the next three or four years—is productivity health. We're starting to get some metrics on, for example, what your HRV is, your heart rate, or your stress levels. Some of our fitness trackers can start tracking those points of data. I think if you combine that data with your workday, it could be a really interesting proposition.
For example, say you wake up in the morning, and your to-do list application could plug into your health data and work out a lot of different things about you. For example, it could be that I had on my to-do list to record five videos, and I wake up, and my recovery is low; I'm not feeling very well. What it would have done is automatically move that task to a day when I typically have higher recovery or higher quality of sleep. So, I think it would be an interesting combination if we had productivity tools that were aware of our health at the same time, using AI to make decisions around that.
That's probably an underrated productivity tip, in my opinion.
Glasp: Actually, one of our founder friends is building a similar app—like a calendar app with data, and it's AI-driven based on your...
Francesco: I think I've heard of it.
Glasp: Yeah, I think he told me you featured his product. I think it was once, maybe one month ago or something.
Francesco: Maybe, yeah. I have a feeling I've definitely seen it, at the very least.
Glasp: That, yeah, what you mentioned reminded me of their product. By the way, this is the last question. Since Glasp is a platform where people can share what they're reading and learning as a digital legacy, we want to know what kind of legacy or impact you want to leave behind for future generations or other people.
Francesco: This is a big question, isn't it? The thing is, I would love to leave... It's a very difficult question because I'm in the phases of my life where I'm going from changing what I've done for 10 years to doing something very new. But what I would love to leave for people is a set of tools that helps them do more in a much better way and allows them to get more done, spend more time with their families, produce quality work, and enrich their lives. If I had to have a legacy, I think as long as those tasks and tools did those things, it would be really beautiful.
I remember when we launched Bento, one of the things we didn't see happening was that the application was actually a very good way for people to narrow down their tasks, set a timer on it, and be very specific. It was strange because, a couple of months in, we got loads of messages from parents with children with autism or ADHD. They found that focusing on three tasks and setting a timer—large, medium, and small, like a Bento box—was a great way for a child with ADHD or autism to focus and set an intention for what they're doing because it gives them a limited focus but a quality focus. When I found that out, when I had all those messages saying, "This has changed the way my daughter's routine for her day is set up," I was like, "Wow, how an app could affect that." I'm sure the same with you guys with Glasp in terms of the resurfacing of knowledge and things like that.
So, I think if I can make an impact on people using tools or picking a tool, that would be amazing.
Glasp: Thank you so much for sharing all the insights and also the impact and legacy you want to leave behind. We are huge fans of what you do.
Francesco: Thank you so much, and vice versa. I'm a big, big fan.
Glasp: Thank you for joining us today.
Francesco: Thank you for having me on.
