With millions of new remote workers, a lot of people are spending much more time at home… working.

Google Home units have become incredibly popular, with 12.5M unit sales in 2018 and Google estimates by 2025, they’ll reach 140M in the smart speak range. But does this translate to work situations?

With Google’s renewed attention on GSuite… sorry, Workspace, and their focus on cleaning things up with Google Meet, Gmail and other software most commonly used in the workplace, chances are they’ll turn their attention on making the consumer options a lot more immersive.

Nests at Work

Google have plenty of options…

What an exciting year for note-taking software…

• The rise of Roam and Obsidian has been well-documented
• The growth and mainstream approach of Notion has finally arrived
• The re-emergence of Evernote is among us…
• And there’s dozens of side tools like Walling, Supernotes & more being thrown around as rapid-growth options
• Not to mention the new “must-have” of note-taking tools, bi-directional linking…

🆕 Name Swap

First of all, the name has changed.

It’s no longer “Note-Taking Apps”

Should I say “Personal Knowledge Apps”…

Probably yes.

Perfectly summarised in NessLabs piece of personal knowledge management, tools have now become much better at encapsulating more of our life.

✨ Winners

• Notion 3.0 — The automation and next…

I’ll stop you here.

I’m a Ferrari fan, so much of this is a clear bias.

Charles LeClerc, a 23-year old driver, is a new star in the F1 line-up. Starting only 2 years ago and with 2 wins under his belt his year hasn’t been perfect.

Ferrari are currently sat 6th in the World Championship, and is on for one of their worst seasons in Formula One, but LeClerc’s self-critical take on each race is something I’ve come to admire.

Per Race Reviews

Arguably every driver does this, after each race, they share their learnings and successes. However, LeClerc seems to do this so well…

So what does he do well…

Traits from self-reflection

• …

Heading into the city hospital, the roads were empty…

Even the hospital on arrival, normally bustling with staff, was eerily quiet — making things both easier to move around but like a ghost town.

It was mid-April in the UK at the peak of the “first wave” that we welcomed into the world our little baby boy, Otto, 3 weeks earlier than scheduled — but gratefully here all safe and sound.

There’s been three things that becoming a new dad in a pandemic has taught me and maybe it’ll help any new dads out there.

The Lockdown

The first few days were…

This last month, I spoke with now Evernote CEO Ian Small — this turned out to be a super interesting conversation about how Evernote aims to chase back up to the pack in their own unique way.

📺 You can watch this full conversation here:

One of the biggest things on my mind was around when Evernote will be releasing new features. Cutting a long story short, Evernote’s Ian shared that they aim to add a major new feature every quarter, so with my excellent maths skills that makes 4 major features a year.

Ian called them “boulders” — which is an Evernote team’s internal name for…

This last year, some of the biggest developments in note-taking applications have happened. Tools like Roam, Obsidian, and even Notion now are introducing bi-directional linking and features that can really weave notes together to make them even more useful.

Productivity software would become the chassis makers.

And AI companies would become the engines.

However, now we’re connecting notes, we’re only just getting started…

I believe note-taking in the next 5 years will get a real boost to make notes the most valuable information that we have in our pockets.

Plugging in your engine

Much like many others watching Iron Man gets me excited. Having a Jarvis style operating system to understand and help your…

What you see in the header is my current note-taking process, something that has been cemented in Notion for the last 9–12 months now. But to understand how I got here, here’s a little more about the tools and methods of the past:

• Evernote was my first note-taking tool
• The first 7–8 years of note-taking was all inside Evernote
• From my dyslexia report at 15 to my wedding day speech
• Evernote is still active for me, just a capture base for documents

This hub for my notes was perfect, but as time grew, so did my interest in documenting my…

The last year has been an interesting one.

Last Summer, in June 2019, I decided to go full-time with content creation, working on Keep Productive, a channel and site dedicated to helping people find the right productivity software — a niche for sure.

Skip forward one year, and whilst things are going well — with views even up 30% during pandemic lockdowns (due to remote work focus) — I’m seeing a downward spiral in the relevance of the channel and content.

1. Growing Market

When we started Keep Productive back in 2012 (well named “Francesco D’Alessio” at the start), a side from the main players like Steve Dotto and DottoTech, there…