People ask me how I manage to build Fewer Tools, write content, do client work, and keep everything moving as one person. The honest answer is that I do not manage it perfectly. Some weeks are great. Others are chaotic. But I have built systems over the past two years that keep the important things happening even when motivation drops or life gets in the way.
This is not a productivity guru article. I do not wake up at 5am. I do not have a 27-step morning routine. I have a simple system that works for me, and I am sharing it because the specifics might be useful to other solo founders figuring this out.
My tool stack (the whole thing)
I use 9 tools for everything. Not 9 categories with multiple tools each. Nine tools total:
- Cursor for all coding. It has replaced VS Code entirely for me. The AI assistance saves me hours daily.
- GitHub for version control and CI/CD through Actions.
- Vercel for hosting everything.
- Supabase for databases, auth, and storage.
- Notion for notes, docs, and a simple CRM. Not for project management.
- Linear for task management. Cycles and priorities, nothing more.
- PostHog for analytics.
- Beehiiv for the newsletter.
- Apple Mail for all communication. No Slack. No Discord. Just email.
That is it. I have tried adding tools and it always makes things worse. Every new tool adds a tab, a notification, a login, and a context switch. The gains from the tool never outweigh the cost of the complexity it adds.
The daily structure
I do not plan my days by the hour. I plan them by blocks. Three blocks per day. Each block is roughly 2 to 3 hours of focused work.
Morning block: build
The first block is always building. Coding, designing, shipping features. This is when I have the most focus and energy, so I protect it fiercely. No email. No messages. No meetings. Just Cursor open, headphones on, building the thing that matters most.
I start each morning block by looking at Linear and picking the single most important task. Not the three most important tasks. One. I work on that one thing until it is done or the block is over. If I finish early, I pick the next one. But I never start the day trying to juggle three things.
Afternoon block: grow
The second block is marketing and growth. Writing blog posts, creating content for the newsletter, reviewing analytics, responding to comments, planning SEO improvements. This is the work that does not feel urgent but compounds over time.
The temptation as a solo founder is to spend all your time building and none growing. But a product nobody knows about is the same as a product that does not exist. I force myself to do growth work every day, even when I would rather be coding.
Evening block: maintain
The third block is the catch-all. Email, client work, admin, planning for the next day. This is where I process everything I ignored during the morning and afternoon. I batch emails into this block specifically so they do not interrupt deep work.
Not every day has all three blocks. Some days life happens. The point is not rigid adherence to a schedule. The point is that when I sit down to work, I know exactly what I should be doing. The system removes the decision of what to work on, which is the decision that wastes the most time.
The weekly rhythm
Monday is planning. I review what shipped last week, check analytics, and decide on the week's priorities. I add these to Linear as a cycle. The cycle has 3 to 5 items maximum. Anything more and I will not finish them.
Tuesday through Thursday is execution. Three full days of the three-block system described above.
Friday is review and content. I review the week's work, write the newsletter, schedule social content, and handle any loose ends. I try to end Friday with nothing open from the week's cycle.
I do not work weekends unless I am in a genuine sprint for a launch. Burning out does not ship features faster. It ships worse features slower.
How I decide what to work on
This is the hard part. As a solo founder, everything is competing for your time. Features, bugs, marketing, sales, admin, content. The framework I use is simple: every task goes through two filters.
Filter 1: Does this move the main metric? Right now my main metric is traffic. Every task that directly contributes to growing traffic gets priority. Everything else waits. Your main metric might be revenue, users, or retention. Pick one and be ruthless about prioritising for it.
Filter 2: Will this matter in 30 days? If a task will not have a lasting impact, it is not important enough to do during a building block. It gets pushed to the maintain block or dropped entirely. Blog posts matter in 30 days because they compound via SEO. Redesigning a button does not.
What I do not do
I do not use time tracking tools. I do not track how many hours I work. If I am making progress on my weekly priorities, the hours do not matter. If I am not making progress, tracking the hours will not help.
I do not use Slack or any real-time messaging for work. Every message is an interruption. Email is slower and that slowness is a feature, not a bug.
I do not attend networking events, join masterminds, or spend time on Twitter (X) threads during work hours. Those activities feel productive but rarely are. I do them occasionally in personal time, never during building time.
I do not optimise my tools. I set them up once and use them. The moment I catch myself tweaking my Notion setup or configuring a new Linear workflow, I stop. That is procrastination.
The tools behind the workflow
If you want to build a similar system, the tools are the easy part. Use our Stack Builder to get recommendations based on your specific needs, or check curated stacks for pre-built tool combinations. The hard part is not choosing tools. The hard part is choosing what to work on and then actually doing it. Tools cannot solve that for you. Only discipline and a simple system can.
The best workflow is the one you actually follow. Keep it simple. Keep it consistent. Ship every week. That is the entire strategy.