Aurelius Tjin's 14-App Productivity Stack

Started making YouTube videos about productivity systems back in 2019 when most people still thought vlogging your desk setup was weird. Documented his own experiments with time blocking, deep work schedules, and basically every productivity method that had a book written about it.

Channel hit 100k subscribers in 2021. By late 2024 it crossed 300k, pulling consistent views on videos dissecting Notion setups, workspace tours, and app comparisons. The content works because Aurelius actually uses the stuff he reviews, not just demoing tools for sponsorship money.

Full-time creator since 2021, revenue split between YouTube AdSense, sponsorships, and affiliate deals. Which creates an interesting tension: sponsors want him to cover their tools, but his audience trusts him because he's honest about what actually works versus what's just marketing.

His stack reflects that reality. Fourteen apps sounds excessive until you realize half of them replace what normal people do manually. The Aurelius Tjin tools below are battle-tested through years of on-camera productivity experiments that either succeeded or failed spectacularly.

Aurelius runs three different calendar apps. Sounds ridiculous, but each handles something specific that the others don't.

Fantastical is the daily driver. Natural language parsing creates events instantly. "Sponsor call with Notion next Tuesday at 2pm for 30 minutes" becomes a properly formatted calendar entry without clicking through date pickers. Calendar sets separate personal, content, and sponsor schedules into color-coded views.

Calendars 5 handles the mobile side with better task integration than Fantastical's iOS app. Week view planning on iPad prevents double-booking filming days and editing deadlines. Natural language works differently than Fantastical but covers similar ground.

Motion adds AI scheduling that automatically rearranges tasks when filming runs long. Manual time blocking breaks the second reality hits. Motion adapts the schedule based on what actually got done versus what was planned.

Tried consolidating to just Fantastical in mid-2023. Lasted three weeks before the lack of AI rescheduling drove him back to Motion. Sometimes tool overlap is justified when each handles a distinct job.

Things handles quick capture and daily task management. Inbox collects random ideas during the day. Projects organize video production phases from research through publishing. Today view shows only what matters now instead of drowning in the full backlog.

Sunsama runs the daily planning ritual every morning. Drags tasks from Things, Motion, and email into one focused timeline. Time boxing prevents overcommitting to eight hours of work in a four-hour day. Evening reflection reviews what actually got done versus what got pushed to tomorrow.

Motion handles project tracking for complex video productions and sponsorship deliverables. Tasks automatically get scheduled based on deadlines and estimated time. Calendar blocking protects deep work sessions from meeting creep.

Yeah, three task managers is overkill for normal humans. But each solves something the others don't. Things for capture speed. Sunsama for daily planning ritual. Motion for AI scheduling. Tried consolidating multiple times, always ends up back at this setup.

Obsidian runs the permanent knowledge system. Zettelkasten-style notes link productivity concepts across different videos and topics. Graph view reveals unexpected connections that turn into content ideas. Daily notes capture thoughts with timestamp context that matters months later.

Readwise syncs highlights from books and articles into daily review emails. Spaced repetition surfaces old insights when planning new videos. Exports to Obsidian for permanent storage in the knowledge graph. After two years of highlights, searching Readwise beats re-reading entire books.

Reeder handles RSS feeds from productivity blogs, tech news, and competitor channels. Batch reading during morning coffee instead of scattered throughout the day. Interesting articles get saved to Readwise for highlighting and eventual export to Obsidian.

The whole flow: Reeder surfaces content, Readwise captures highlights, Obsidian stores knowledge permanently. Three apps doing what Notion tries to do in one but never quite pulls off at this scale.

Raycast replaced Spotlight and Alfred as the command palette for everything. Launches apps, searches Notion and Obsidian, creates calendar events, all without leaving the keyboard. Clipboard history recovers lost snippets that would normally disappear forever.

Window management arranges editing layout with one shortcut. Browser left half, Final Cut right half, Notes bottom third. Beats manually dragging windows around twenty times daily.

Alfred still runs for custom workflows that Raycast doesn't handle yet. File organization automation, text expansion for common email replies, complex scripts triggering multiple actions. As Raycast adds features, Alfred's role shrinks, but it's not replaceable yet.

Timing tracks where time actually goes automatically. No manual start-stop timers. Just runs in the background categorizing app usage and website visits. Weekly reports show if editing really takes 8 hours or if half that time disappears into YouTube rabbit holes and Slack.

Freedom kills distracting websites during deep work blocks. Scheduled sessions run automatically on filming and editing days. Nuclear option blocks the entire internet when concentration demands it. Can't cheat the block without rebooting, which creates just enough friction to stay focused.

Superhuman handles the 100+ daily emails in about 20 minutes. Keyboard shortcuts batch through everything without touching the mouse. Send-later schedules responses for business hours instead of training sponsors to expect instant replies at midnight.

Lightroom batch edits thumbnail photos with custom presets maintaining consistent channel aesthetic across 400+ videos. Shoots 8-10 thumbnail options per video, narrows to top three in Lightroom, then A/B tests on YouTube. Mobile sync handles quick edits during travel shoots.

The whole production workflow runs through these Aurelius Tjin tools without much human coordination. Motion schedules tasks. Timing tracks where hours go. Freedom blocks distractions. Superhuman handles communication. What used to take scattered manual effort now mostly runs on autopilot.