I have a Google Doc open that I have never once closed on purpose. It only disappears when my laptop starts screaming at me to install a software update.
The document has multiple tabs, loosely organized around whatever part of my life needed a home that week:
the beehiiv Ad Network,
personal thoughts,
date ideas for my wife,
professional goals,
and whatever else didn't fit anywhere.
Inside each tab is a never-ending collection of bullet points, links to Slack threads, reminders of things I owe clients, and tasks that have been started, finished, abandoned, or some combination of all three. Most of it will never see daylight.
One tab is called "Maybe Newsletter Ideas." Every few days, through doomscrolling or a conversation or something I noticed that week, a concept shows up that might be worth writing about. I drop it in and try to imagine as many issues out of it as I can. The test is intentionally undefined. If I keep returning to an idea and the list eventually gets long enough, maybe there's a newsletter in it. That's more or less how this one started.
Thanks to work, I have access to more sophisticated productivity software than any reasonable person needs: tools for tasks, projects, notes, bookmarks, goals, calendars, databases, and probably a few categories I've forgotten exist.
I still keep coming back to the same increasingly messy document.
Part of that is convenience, adding a bullet takes almost no thought.
But I think the real reason is that most software wants a thought to become something. A task, a note, a project, a reminder. You're asked to decide where it belongs, what it's for, and when you'll do something about it. Plenty of thoughts aren't ready for that. They're not projects yet. They might never be tasks. Some stay fragments forever: a sentence I want to remember, a product that caught my eye, a question I can't answer, an idea that hasn't earned a conclusion yet. The document doesn't ask any of that to justify itself. It gives it somewhere to stay unfinished. Some of it keeps resurfacing, collecting notes and links and connections until it becomes something real. Most of it just sits for months before I admit it's going nowhere.
This newsletter is, in a way, the public and edited version of that process. It's a place for the ideas, products, links, and unfinished thoughts that keep surviving inside the document.
Because I'm beginning to think the best system isn't the one that organizes everything perfectly. It's the one you trust enough to put anything into.
And the thought that seems to persist in all conversations that I haven’t been able to answer yet:
How much structure does a useful system actually need before the structure itself starts getting in the way?
Ask me again in a few issues. It'll probably still be open.