Tools We Use Every Day
We built zzOwn because we needed tools for our own work. These are the ones that are open before anything else every morning.
They are not the most powerful tools available. They are the ones that get out of the way.
THE LIST
Text cleaner
Paste messy text in. Get clean text out. No formatting. No hidden characters. No surprise line breaks when you paste it somewhere else.
We use this every day. More than any other tool.
File renamer
Rename a folder of files in one pass. Date prefix, lowercase, strip spaces. One drag, one click, done.
Before this we were doing it one file at a time. It was embarrassing how long that took.
Quick timer
A countdown. No app. No account. Just a number and a start button.
Useful for focused blocks, meeting limits, and knowing when the coffee is ready.
WHY THESE
These tools share three things:
- They open fast
- They do one thing
- They close without asking to save
That last one matters more than it sounds. A tool that does not interrupt you when you are done is a tool that respects your time.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
When we pick a tool to use or build, we ask one question:
Does this make the work faster, or does it make the tool faster?
A tool that improves itself is not the same as a tool that improves your work. We only care about the second kind.
The cut rule
If a tool has not been opened in two weeks, it gets removed. No exceptions.
Most tools do not survive this rule. The ones that do are the ones worth building.