I took the advice from this LifeProTip and tracked my natural energy and focus patterns for a week to figure out when I’m most productive. For me, it’s after 1 PM. In the mornings, even though I do everything “right”—sitting out in the sun, sipping coffee, and exercising—I still usually feel energetically dispersed and have brain fog for the first half of the day. Instead of getting frustrated or trying to force myself to focus, I decided to shift my approach. Now, I work on tasks that don’t require much brainpower in the morning and save the more demanding ones for the afternoon. This one change has made me feel less shameful or frustrated with my natural patterns and more accomplished each day. — CD

My wife started using this CNMSGM hair dryer. Compared to her old dryer, it’s much quieter, more powerful, and lighter (under 1 pound). It features a smart LED ring that changes color to indicate temperature mode (red for hot, orange for warm, green for soft, and blue for cool). The two magnetic attachments snap on easily. Some users on Amazon mention that the power cord is a bit short, but I measured it, and it's 70 inches long, which is more than enough for our bathroom. — MF

I love wearing rings, but my fingers are smaller than average and it’s really hard to find rings below a size 5, so I’m often disappointed when shopping for fashion jewelry. I finally found a solution with this Invisible Ring Spacer by Yiruhe. I coat the inside of the ring with a resin liquid that hardens in two minutes under UV light, repeating the process until the ring fits perfectly. It’s straightforward, and if you mess up or want to remove it, you can just run the ring under warm water and peel off the resin easily. My only complaint is the smell of the resin, so I’ve been resizing my rings outside. — CD

Part of the thrill of being alive is that we don’t know when we will die. However, I’ve found that knowing my statistical death age to be very clarifying, and it helps me focus on maximizing today. There’s a new AI-enhanced Death Clock that takes into account your lifestyle choices to give you a death date based on statistics. It’s quick and free on the web. Treat it as a hint rather than destiny. — KK

Google has made it easier to see what personal information about you is currently posted on the web. Go to the Results About You page at Google, and fill out the form. It will take several days to weeks before you get results back showing what the public web shows. For me about a dozen occurrences of my home and email address. You can ask Google to delete each instance, but it only deletes it from its search results and not the web. (For that you need to contact the site displaying it.) — KK

Speech-to-Text by Borg is an automated transcription service with a generous free tier. You can upload MP3s up to 25MB (roughly 30 minutes of audio) and get fast, high-quality transcripts without paying a cent. They offer a paid tier at $0.06/hour for longer recordings. I use it for interviews, meeting notes, and voice memos. — MF

Than Average is a small, “unscientific” investigation into how you compare yourself to others—for fun. Just answer the questions instinctively and see where you land in a room with 100 strangers. You can view all the questions and see how many people have answered them. I left my emotions and insecurities out of it, and found all the results interesting. — CD

Rather than trashing my old stuff, I like to find a new home for it, selling it or giving it away for free. The real action for used stuff has moved away from Craigslist to Facebook Marketplace. (The broadest reach is on eBay, but everything needs to be packaged for shipping.) Facebook Marketplace is the best for local and bulky things. It is a lot easier to use than Craigslist, and in my experience has 10 times the responses (for selling) or varieties (for buying). It is free to use. If you have patience you can find almost anything you want on Facebook Marketplace used, or get rid of almost anything you want with minimal hassle. — KK

I needed a caddy for a newly tiled shower stall but was skeptical of suction-cup mounts, which in my experience always fail. The Hasko Shower Caddy changed my mind — it uses a knob-tightening mechanism that creates an incredibly strong hold on smooth tile. I installed it a month ago and it hasn't budged, even when loaded with heavy bottles and supplies. For rough surfaces, it includes adhesive mounting discs. — MF

Through ACER, an online integration community I am part of, I occasionally host wood whittling sessions. I am not a detail-oriented person or particularly skilled with my hands, but I find it very soothing and meditative to shape and smooth out tree sticks, which I then glue crystals and feathers onto to create wands. My only tool is this beginner’s carving kit by BeaverCraft. I’ve used it for a year now, and the knives are still sharp and easy to hold. They’re helping to build my confidence to someday carve a figure. — CD

I try to coordinate my travel to exotic places with local festivals that occur at the same time. Trouble is, there’s been no easy way to find out which festivals are happening where. For example many traditional celebrations run on a lunar cycle. So I built a calendar that will show me all the festivals in Asia that are happening on a particular day. Or I can look at the map and see what festivals occur nearby and when. My site is called Festivo. It provides the local festivals of Asia—which are crammed with color, costumes, and traditions—in calendar format. It’s open and free to all, no ads. If enough people (besides myself) find it useful I will expand it to Europe, Africa, and the rest of the world. — KK

The website The Sound of Love offers a beautiful way to experience love songs. For four years, the creator collected comments found beneath love songs on YouTube, carefully selecting nostalgic and touching stories about longing, love, and loss. You can read these personal stories and memories here while you listen. There’s also a Spotify playlist featuring all the songs from The Sound of Love. (Discovered through Dense Discovery.) — CD

While I like my thin microplane for super-fine zesting, I use this wider grater from Allwin a lot more. The key difference is its curved blade profile — it really bites into whatever you're grating. The wider surface area also means you can get through a block of parmesan or a big knob of ginger much faster than with a traditional narrow microplane. — MF

My husband is the gardener of the family, and this Repotting Mat is his favorite gardening tool. It’s quick to snap together and contains all the soil mess when potting plants. He has two in different sizes. I imagine it would work well for keeping track of small parts too, if you’re working on other projects. — CD

Three separate acquaintances of mine recently suffered significant, expensive flood damage in their homes as a result of water leaks while they were away. It’s not an uncommon disaster. After some research I settled on the best recommended solution: a set of wireless water sensors from GoveeLife ($100) that emit a loud alarm and send a text/email to my phone if they detect water leaking. I placed the 6 small wireless units below sinks, near toilets and water heaters, etc.—the most likely places to leak. They were very easy to pair with my home wifi and phone app. Downside is that in a few years their batteries will need to be changed. Upside is they really work and in my testing, just a small drip or a millimeter of water will elicit an immediate alarm and text/email message. — KK

After seeing a video of someone using a massage gun to force every last drop of mayonnaise out of a bottle, I decided to try in on a plastic jar of unmixed natural peanut butter. I pushed the business end of the gun against the side of the jar and marveled at how quickly the vibrations mixed the separated oil with the solids. A week later, the peanut butter remains perfectly blended. Note: I've only tested this on plastic jars; use caution with glass containers. — MF

Did you ever make a linoleum wood-block print in school? I did, and cutting linoleum was a pain. It took a lot of energy and effort to even make a small design. Recently I returned to making woodcut prints and hand-carved stamps because I discovered the secret: instead of cutting either wood or linoleum, I carve on a sheet of firm rubber, which cuts like butter. Speedball, the legendary company making carving tools, produces their own Speedy-Carve Blocks which have the consistency of a pencil eraser. Many other generic manufacturers in China offer this soft carving sheets, too. Now, making a block print is quick and enjoyable. — KK

I have a rotating door of newsletters in my inbox, and I’m often subscribing and unsubscribing as I outgrow them, but Wonder Tools is one that I continue to read weekly. Jeremy Kaplan generously offers in-depth research about the most useful tools on the Internet and shares his insights for free. I always learn something new and discover websites and apps that make my computer life easier. A good example is his recent issue: Deep Research with AI: 9 Ways to Get Started. — CD

The best mobile app for identifying living species is iNaturalist. It is free, fast, and can identify most plants, animals and many fungi. Load it onto your phone, use it to snap a picture, and then its AI will ID it. To date, it can identify 500,000 species. You can then share your observation with iNaturalist’s extensive community of enthusiasts who can confirm, refine, and expand upon what you found. Because you can opt to allow the location of your observation, the app is also contributing to science. (The current app is a newly rewritten version that replaces both iNaturalist Classic and kid-version Seek.) Twenty five years ago I co-founded a non-profit to catalog all the species on the planet and this is the technology that we dreamed about. — KK

Language enthusiast Yuji Beleza travels the world recording his encounters with strangers. He speaks five languages fluently — Japanese, English, Russian, German, and Turkish — and knows enough to hold basic conversations in dozens more. When people tell him where they're from, he immediately switches to their native language. Watch as their expressions transform from coolness and suspicion to warmth and trust. My friend Irwin Miller shared Beleza's Instagram channel with me, and it instantly lifted my spirits. — MF