Wonder Tools: Useful tips for creative productivity

Now that fall is here, my focus has been fragile. Noise, notifications, news, and email grab at my attention. To help cope with distractions, I've stitched together a focus toolkit with apps, sites, and sounds. Some are new, others old. My goal this season is to concentrate for a bit longer when my attention might otherwise drift. I hope this collection will be useful for you too. This simple email add-on temporarily freezes what you see in your inbox.

Today I’m sharing a guest post on how to strengthen your AI skills. It’s by Frank Andrade, an AI instructor who has helped thousands of people on Substack master ChatGPT and Claude with beginner-friendly guides and in-depth tutorials. Frank: The gap between AI novices and experts is growing. • One group is saving 5 minutes on emails. • Others are running systems that work while they sleep. The good news? You can progress faster than you might think.

Tools > Voice typing When I’m tired of typing, I dictate. I like voice typing with Google Docs to add sentences to a blank page as I think out loud. Here’s a sample of my dictated text. Read it aloud to test your voice typing. The transcription isn’t perfect,1 but it’s free. File > New > Help me create > Match doc format I can base any new doc on a prior design, like my pedagogy resources handout. This gives me a quick way to create new styled drafts. Requires Gemini to be turned on.

I’m excited to be starting a new semester this week, like millions of other teachers. As a resource for my fellow educators, I’m updating a piece I wrote for The 74, the nonprofit education news site. The average K-12 teacher works 49 hours a week. About a quarter of that time is uncompensated. In higher ed, adjuncts make up about 40% of the faculty workforce. At many institutions, time spent on course prep and administrative tasks is unpaid.

ChatGPT Sites is one of the best new tools I've tried for making simple websites. I once spent hours drafting HTML by hand. I struggled with complex site-building software called Dreamweaver. Now making a good-looking site is as easy as creating a Google Doc. Describe what you’re envisioning in a few sentences. Upload images or screenshots if you have a design in mind. Explain any special functionality you want, like linked buttons, embedded visuals, or interactive elements.

Whenever I write Wonder Tools, I fuss over how best to add visual variety. I do that so you, dear reader, arenā€™t bored by thick walls of text. (I halved the length of this post for the same reason). Distinct images grab attention. Thatā€™s why Iā€™m sharing Whorl and Flux 3, new tools that make it easy to create and customize unique imagery. Iā€™m Jeremy, by the way, and Iā€™ve produced this weekly missive a few hundred times, rain or shine, with my own brain and hands.

Connect Your Tools to AI 🔗 I’ve changed how I use Claude and ChatGPT lately. They’ve become my digital dashboards, linked to many of the tools I rely on. 🧠 A Guide to Thinking With AI To avoid the temptation to outsource my thinking to AI, I’m pushing in the opposite direction. Here's how I'm approaching this challenge. 🔒 How to Use AI Privately for Free ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude aren’t your only AI options. To use AI securely, download local AI tools that run on your computer privately for free.

My friend and colleague Mallary Tenore Tarpley writes an excellent newsletter, Write at the Edge, with helpful writing tips and best practices. She’s a professor, journalist, and author who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other outlets. She recently published an important debut book, Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery. Mallary recently interviewed me about writing tools. She wrote up a summary of our conversation, highlighting the tools I talked about.

I’ve always admired the way bestselling author A.J. Jacobsturns his life into a laboratory for testing quirky ideas. He’s written books about following every biblical law for a year, reading each entry in the encyclopedia, and thanking a thousand people responsible for his morning coffee. I consider it immersion journalism. He calls himself a human guinea pig. So I was delighted to meet A.J. at a recent Substack event.

I’ve changed how I use Claudeand ChatGPT lately. They’ve become my digital dashboards, linked to many of the tools I rely on. I can ask Claude to add to my calendar, query my meeting notes, update me on my email, or find a passage I highlighted in my digital notebook. Claude Connectors and ChatGPT plugins connect to hundreds of services. These include Superhuman Mail for email, Google Calendar, Granola for meeting notes, and Readwise for my online highlights.