You don't have a tool problem—you have a "decision fatigue" problem

We went through this exact crisis when we were a team of five. We had Notion for docs, Slack for chat, Trello for tasks, Figma for whiteboarding, Loom for updates, linear for dev sprints, and three different analytics dashboards. Every single tool was "great," but together they created absolute chaos.

Here’s the hidden tax we didn't calculate:

• Information Fragmentation: Half our time was spent asking "Wait, did you link that specs document in Slack, Notion, or Linear?"

• Shadow Costs: $30/user/month doesn't sound like much until you multiply it by 11 tools across the team. Suddenly, you're burning thousands annually on features you only use 10% of.

• Onboarding Friction: Bringing on a contractor meant spending an hour provisioning accounts and walking them through our complex web of apps.

We did a hard reset: if a tool didn't replace at least two existing workflows or save us 5+ hours a week directly, we axed it. We ended up consolidating down to three core hubs. The relief was immediate.