15 Tools Smart People Use (in 2024)

The only sign of intelligence is your ability to adapt to changing times and environments. Historically, those who adopt technology first end up ruling over those who don't. Be it guns, agriculture, industrialization, digital networks, and now probably AI. The last thing you want to be is left behind while everyone else is already years ahead of you. Here are 15 tools smart people use in 2024.

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AI for Productivity

Imagine if we didn't put AI on this list. Not only do we mean to use ChatGPT for text, we're talking about using apps like Consensus for large-scale studies through ChatGPT. Not only do we mean you should use MidJourney for visuals, but MidJourney mixed with Runway or Sora to create visual assets for your business. Despite what lots of comments say, I am a real human narrating this, but there are certain audio tools that will certainly come in handy in the future. 11 Labs for voice cloning, Crisp for your video sessions, Fireflies for your personal assistant in meetings, and a ton more.

What AI allows you to do is become a one-person army. Those who learn how to use these tools will no longer need to hire additional employees because you can simply build this entire enterprise of AI workers. For the first time in history, someone will build a billion-dollar business on their own, no additional employees. We plan on doing a dedicated AI tools video soon where we break down exactly how we would do it, so subscribe not to miss it.

Smart Home and Business Automation

Technology fixes inefficiencies and saves you time. We love having everything monitored from a distance. Air purifiers in every room ensure air quality throughout the house. The ability to securely control most of your home from your phone is priceless. We fell in love with technology when we were in bed and told our smart home assistant to turn all of the lights off, and we didn't have to get out of bed to do it. It's the little things in life, right?

The same goes for your business. The more automated the processes are, the better you sleep at night—not having to worry about your accounting, your payroll, your data, and having a cohesive dashboard for everything is just golden. We use Pilot for accounting, Gusto or Ramp for payments, UI Path for automations, and Mercury Bank allows us to automate our cash management. A portion of all of our profits goes directly into the S&P 500. At any point, you can just open up each one of these and have a clear understanding of how you're doing.

Off-the-Grid Home Infrastructure

Think of these as taking back control of your consumption. Not only is it a recoupable investment, it can actually become profitable. Solar panels with smart batteries charge your electric car. Your home is heated with heat pumps using the Deep Earth's high temperature. Your rainwater harvesting system makes sure your home garden is watered consistently so you can grow your own food. Smart filters make sure all water is drinkable. Starlink provides fast internet even in the most remote locations.

We know you've been thinking about leaving the city behind and moving to the countryside to live a slower life. Well, this allows you to do just that.

Advanced Health Trackers

Sure, it starts with an Apple Watch tracking your steps, calories, sleep, and heart rate, but there's more to it. We fell in love with our Withings smart scale tracking everything around our body composition. Eight Sleep not only provides detailed sleep analytics but allows us to control the temperature on each side of the bed. We tried the Whoop bracelet and the Oura ring, but they weren't for us.

If you've seen people wearing patches on their arms like this one, well, it's because they're monitoring their glucose levels and more through a smart sensor. Vively is our current go-to, but we would love something with more data. Subscriptions are expensive at around $700 per year, but as more companies are entering this space, we expect better products at lower price points to become available any day now. Since the tech isn't there quite yet with the wearables, we'll talk at number seven about something that's already available for everyone today—and remember, you can't optimize what you do not measure.

Bringing all of your health data into a single place helps you to keep track of how you're doing. But keeping all of your data secured has become increasingly important, which is why smart people use Virtual Private Networks. What you do online is your business, and it should stay that way. The internet as a structure has become a gold mine of personal data, and every big corporation out there is trying to weaponize it against you. Everything you buy gets labeled; everything you look at is remembered. Every search you make, every like, and even how much time you spend looking at a photo.

This is why even your local supermarket is pushing you to create an account with their platform, so they can monitor what you buy, so they can figure out how rich you are and how they can get some of that money. You used to be free of prying eyes, and it's time to get that freedom back. The way smart people do it is they use a Virtual Private Network. These are small programs that anonymize your data with one click. You toggle a switch on, and all of a sudden, your IP is somewhere else in the world.

Not only is this incredibly valuable when you're browsing the internet because they can no longer pinpoint it to you, but it keeps you safe from hackers who might try to steal your credit card information. We've personally been using NordVPN for over 5 years now on our MacBooks, iPhone, and all other devices, and everyone in our inner circle uses them too. So let's set you up as well, since you're an Aluxer. NordVPN was kind enough to sponsor this video. If you go to nordvpn.com/alux right now, you'll get four extra months on us on a 2-year plan, or just click the link in the description or the top comment. Once you've got a subscription, you're one tap away from privacy, and it's pretty cool to know that you can shift your online footprint from one country to the next. Go to nordvpn.com/alux to get the Alux exclusive offer right now and take back control of your online data.

Social Media as Distribution Platforms

In 2024 and 2025, social media has lost its user-friendly appeal. Adding someone on Facebook gives you the ick. Instagram is a superficial, brand-infused platform, and TikTok is sugar and caffeine for your brain. The primary reason to use it is as a distribution platform. Smart people have realized by now just how toxic the gamification of social interactions has become to our society. So you only go on social media if you want people to know about something you're working on. Showing people the private parts of your life is a big no-no right now, as it should be.

Blood Work with Dietary Supplements

To fix your deficits and sharpen your focus, health tech has made incredible leaps in the past 10 years. Every city now has a smart lab that can break down your entire blood work and pinpoint specifically what's missing from your internal juice cocktail. Not only can they now create personalized bundles of supplements specifically organized to fit your deficits, but you can go after it proactively. Better sleep, focus, and more work longer hours are now available in pill form. In Silicon Valley, Adderall is as common as Red Bull. In Europe, we find it as maple supplements, and nootropics are becoming more mainstream than ever.

Saunas and Hyperbaric Chambers

Four years ago, we installed a sauna in our home, and we haven't had a cold since. As soon as any symptoms present themselves, we throw ourselves in that sauna, take a couple of pills, and the next day it all went away. We can't believe just how underrated saunas are. And you know they're not as expensive as you think. If you go on Amazon right now, you can buy a pre-built sauna for about $2,000. Sure, it's not cheap, but it ain't that expensive either. They ship it to you, and you just install it. We leave a link in the description with a similar one to ours.

We prefer to have a private sauna because sauna etiquette in the US or anywhere in gyms, for that matter, is absolutely terrible. As for hyperbaric chambers, this is where money does buy you your youth. It's a chamber where you control the purity of the oxygen. It helps with healing and rejuvenation by altering the oxygen pressure in the blood. You could tackle a bunch of problems, including hearing loss. The only ones who traditionally could afford them were professional sports teams and high-end clinics, but since rich people want the best return for their money, production has increased in the last few years. A hyperbaric session costs between $200 to $700.

Alkaline Water

The benefits of alkaline water are heavily documented. It reduces blood clots, increases sleep quality, bone density, etc. There are two kinds of devices you can buy for around $1,000 to $2,200. You can buy a machine that sits on your countertop next to your sink that will ionize your water for you, or you could go the fancy way and have it under the counter with a dedicated faucet. A country shouldn't be called developed if you can't drink water straight from the tap.

Brain Enhancing Apps

If you feel stressed out, if you've got trouble sleeping at night, if you worry a lot, if you don't know what to do with your future, this one's for you. If you feel constantly anxious and burned out, if you feel like life is running by you, if it feels like you're not keeping up or you lack purpose and direction, well, there are tools out there to fix this specifically. Some people overcome them through meditation, and there are a bunch of apps out there. But what meditation does is just make your brain stop the noise for a little bit. Turning the volume down on a problem doesn't make the problem go away, does it?

So you need to solve it and solve it once and for all. There's no other way around it, and you have to be smart enough to know that. As far as we know, there's only one app specifically designed to increase the quality of your life in what we call the five pillars of a good life: money, health, intellect, emotions, and relationships. We know about it because we've been building it for the past two years. Okay, over 200,000 people have downloaded our app so far, and they're blown away because they've never experienced something like the Alux app before.

So go to alux.com/slapp right now. It's like a cheat code to life. You put your earphones in for 10 minutes every day with your coffee, and we take your brain to the gym. Better decision making, clarity of thinking, knowing what you want out of life, and more importantly, exactly how to get there—that is life-altering. We spent over a million dollars of our own money building this, and we'll spend millions more making sure we deliver on our promise to you. Go to alux.com/slapp and get yourself a yearly subscription. You'll realize how valuable of a tool this is from the first time you use it.

Modern-Day Country Clubs

Smart people always seek to spend time with other smart people. Your network is one of the most valuable things you can build. So what they do is pay membership fees to country clubs that provide the opportunity of like-minded people coming together. A great concept overall, but the world has changed outside of your local environment. There are even more select groups that might be worth taking a look at for entrepreneurs like us. Samars' Hampton membership fits well. There are organizations all around the world bringing together entrepreneurs or people interested in the thing that you're passionate about. So find yours.

IVF Babies and Fertility

Fertility is a bigger industry than you might imagine. People are postponing having kids, and statistically, it's harder than ever to conceive something you wouldn't necessarily be able to pinpoint looking at the 9 million people on the planet, but it is true. For the first time in human history, more than 50% of women are child-free at the age of 30. Now, we're not sure how familiar you are with childbearing, but after the age of 30, the female body starts to go downhill from a reproduction standpoint. After 35, you're at a tenth of your chances; by the age of 40, natural conception is extremely unlikely.

But if you ask anyone who's become a parent, absolutely nothing in the world is as rewarding as having a child. You might not think so now; you might be Peter Pan-ing your way through life because they told you career should come first and you could have kids later, but you could argue that's a little bit of a scam. If you wait too long to decide, you might not have the choice at all. So what lots of smart people are doing is they're putting embryos on ice. You might not be ready to be a parent just yet, but save something for yourself for the future. If the time comes and it feels right to you, you can decide then, but give yourself the option.

The great miracle of modern medicine is that through IVF treatments, you have data on your possible offspring and you can select the one with the highest likelihood of proper development.

School Cells for Kids

Smart people don't allow schools to brainwash their kids into being political agenda puppets. So they're taking their kids out of traditional schools in droves because left and right-wing agendas have begun infiltrating private schools as well. Those who don't want to politicize their kids decide to build micro schools. Three to four families come together and hire a private teacher for their kids.

This way, the ratio of kids per teacher is substantially lower than any other school, so each child gets proper attention. The teacher is paid a higher wage, and parents have more control over what their kids learn. So here, everybody wins.

Super Apps for Services

While in Dubai, we use an app called Kafu that refills your car with gas straight in your parking lot. You need your car washed? They take care of that as well. They'll change your oil, battery, or tires—pretty smart, ain't it? These apps are popping up everywhere around the world. This app is for home spot treatments or haircuts; the other app for handymen, gardening, pool cleaning, and so on. The problem is they're currently segmented, but we think that's about to change.

It won't take long until we have a proper app with a great user interface where all services will be available on the same screen.

Lastly, Dopamine Detox

Now this might not be a tool per se, but it's something you use to get yourself ahead in life. Go to Airbnb.com, find a house somewhere away from everyone, preferably out in nature with trees and a lot of space around you. Book it and go there for a couple of days. Put your phone on airplane mode under your pillow and just exist for a while. Immediately, your brain and hands will start showing withdrawal symptoms, and that's when you realize it really is that damn phone.

You forgot what it's like to be in nature without snapping a photo. Go on a hike, be in a forest, be in a body of water, run around—play like you used to. 72 hours will do wonders for your brain, and you'll finally be able to rest the way you're supposed to. The way you live your life is in your hands, Aluxer. So be smart and use the tools you have at your disposal to get yourself ahead.

What about you, my friend? What's one tool you're using this year that's proven to be a game changer in your field? Share it in the comments; the more specific the better. And since you stuck around until the end, here's your bonus: if you're so smart, why do you still have to deal with this?

One of the biggest breakthroughs that we've had came from this particular question. We self-coach a lot, and we're constantly pushing ourselves to figure out better ways to go through life. Every time we're looking for growth, we say the following phrase: "You're not as smart as you think you are," because if you were, you wouldn't have to deal with this right now. And then we take that challenge personally. We actively try to prove ourselves wrong.

We look to solve a problem forever instead of solving it for the day. We dig a bit deeper and find solutions that remedy that problem for good. Instead of taking care of the task, we'd rather spend the time to find someone who we can outsource that task to when needed, and then we use that free time to focus on things where we have the most leverage.

This type of thinking made us wealthy and happy—both require different approaches. Treat it as a challenge and see if you're really as smart as you think you are. Prove it to yourself. If you're willing to accept the challenge, write the word "smart" in the comments.