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🧰 Learn Faster With These Smart Tools
Published about 7 hours ago • 5 min read
🧰 Smart tools. Useful tips. Weekly.
Hola friend 👋,
I’m Josep. Each week, I hunt down practical tools and productivity hacks to help digital doers like you do more with less effort.
This week: learning tools, both AI and human-powered.
Learning has always been a hobby of mine, even if it takes up a lot of time. I often find myself reading books on topics I’ll probably never really have a practical use for – at the moment I am reading 'Why Nations Fail' by Daron Acemoglu and James A, and I am not really sure why.
But in 2026, reading a book isn’t the only way to learn. Today, I’m sharing a couple of apps that can help you get there faster and more effectively.
Plus: a brilliant tool for design inspiration, a simple hack to master your inbox, and a surprising protest from the literary world.
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If you've ever felt self-conscious about your English skills, Fluently is an AI-powered tutor designed to help you improve. It’s a fascinating tool, even for those who are already proficient.
The app lets you set specific goals, like improving pronunciation, writing better, or expanding your vocabulary. You then have a conversation with an AI named “Stacy,” who asks you questions and assesses your performance.
The AI told me my accent was 30% Spanish and 70% Italian – I have no idea where the Italian part came from! It was a bizarre but surprisingly insightful experience, and I can see how this app could genuinely help people quickly gain confidence and polish their English.
If you prefer a more human touch or want to learn something other than English, Preply is an excellent alternative. It’s a big online platform where you can find human tutors for almost any language and subject you would like to learn – from learning Urdu to finding a philosophy tutor.
The main difference from AI tools is, of course, the personal connection. With Preply, you can browse thousands of real tutor profiles, read reviews, and find someone who fits your learning style and budget.
I love that tutors usually have a video explaining who they are and what their expertise and credentials are. You also get a sense of what they’re like as a person. It’s a bit like Tinder for tutors!
If you’d rather have AI create a completely personalized learning experience, Tutor AI is an interesting tool. It’s a platform that generates entire courses on any topic you can think of in just a few minutes.
You simply tell the AI what you want to learn, and it builds a structured course complete with modules, lessons, quizzes, and summaries. It’s like having a personal curriculum designer on demand. Whether you want to understand quantum physics or learn about the latest AI research papers.
While it lacks the human interaction of Preply, and you have to accept the risk of an AI tutor that does not always get everything right, its strength lies in its ability to structure knowledge and create educational content 100% tailored exactly to what you want to learn.
Starting a new website or app design can be tough. If you're ever staring at a blank canvas wondering where to begin, Stitch is a fantastic (and free) tool to get your creative juices flowing.
It’s not another AI builder, but an AI design tool from Google. It helps you generate inspiration and create simple wireframes (or even final designs) for your projects. You can quickly put together different UI components and layouts to visualize your ideas.
I recently used it for design inspiration for some internal dashboards I was building (or Claude Code was building for me), and it was incredibly helpful for mocking up the initial structure. It’s not a full-featured design suite like Figma, but that’s the point: it’s simple, fast, and perfect for the early stages of a project.
Feeling overwhelmed by your inbox? The "snooze" feature is your new best friend. It’s available in most modern email clients (like Gmail and Outlook) and lets you temporarily hide an email from your inbox and have it reappear at a more convenient time – yes, a bit like a time traveler.
Here are a few ways I use it to stay organized:
For follow-ups: If I need to follow up on an email in a few days, I snooze it to the date I want to take action. No need for a separate reminder.
For weekend emails: If an email comes in on a Saturday, I snooze it until Monday morning. This helps me protect my weekend and start the week with a clear plan.
For time-sensitive tasks: If an email is related to a meeting later in the day, I snooze it to an hour before the meeting. It serves as a perfect, context-rich reminder.
For non-urgent reads: For newsletters or articles I want to read later, I snooze them to the evening or the weekend.
It's a simple trick, but it can transform your inbox from a source of stress into a well-organized zen space.
🍿 Plot Twist of the Week
The literary world fired a major shot in the battle over AI and copyright. Nearly 10,000 authors, including big names like Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Atwood, published an “empty” book titled Don’t Steal This Book.
The book, distributed for free at the London Book Fair, contains nothing but the names of its contributors. The powerful stunt was a protest against AI companies training their models on copyrighted works without permission or compensation. As reported by The Guardian, the campaign aims to highlight the threat AI poses to authors' livelihoods.
It’s a bold and creative move that puts a spotlight on one of the most urgent questions of the AI era: who owns the data that powers these powerful new tools?
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! Next time, we’ll dive into some incredibly useful AI tools you probably didn't know existed.
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