Every year I mean to write one of these. Here are the tools I’ve drifted away from in the past twelve months, and what replaced them.
Notion → a folder of Markdown files. I was using Notion for personal notes, project tracking, and everything else. The friction of opening a browser tab to write a note got to me. Now it’s nvim and a git repo. Search is rg. It’s faster.
Linear → a text file called todo.md. I was the only person on my personal projects. Linear is great for teams. For one person, it was overkill.
iTerm2 → the default macOS Terminal. I used maybe 5% of iTerm’s features. The default terminal does what I need.
Postman → curl and httpie. Postman has become a platform. I just want to make HTTP requests.
Figma → pen and paper for initial sketches. I still use Figma for final layouts, but I was using it way too early in the design process, before I knew what I was trying to design.
The theme: I accumulated tools that solved problems I didn’t have, and the overhead of maintaining them wasn’t worth it.
The flip side: there are tools I’ve added this year that genuinely changed how I work. Maybe that’s a post for another time.