Tending My Own System
Every morning, I open at least two apps just to figure out how to start my day. One for Notion, where all my knowledge and reference info lives. One for ByDesign, where my tasks live. It doesn't take long before I'm getting distracted moving from one to the other, trying to remember what I was actually doing in the first place.
A few weeks ago, in the middle of that same back and forth, I made a decision. Nothing dramatic. Just a choice to adjust my tools so I could stop the context switching and avoid the distraction that came with it.
I want to walk through the whole thing, not because switching tools is interesting on its own, but because the process I used on myself is the same one I use with clients. It's just easier to see the friction in someone else's systems than in your own. When you're standing inside something, it's harder to spot what's not working.
Sustainable by Design
What if sustainability wasn't about how long you could keep going, but about whether the going was actually worth sustaining?
That is a different question than the one most business advice asks. Most of it is concerned with endurance. How do you keep up the pace? How do you maintain output? How do you scale without breaking? The assumption underneath all of it is that the direction is right and the only problem is the stamina.
But stamina in service of the wrong thing is not sustainability. It is just a slower kind of depletion.
The tools I actually use
People ask me about tools a lot. What do I use for scheduling? What about invoicing? How do I manage my calendar without losing my mind?
For a long time, I answered these questions one conversation at a time. Then I realized I was having the same conversation over and over, which is usually a sign that something wants to be written down.
So I wrote it down.
My tools page is my honest answer to the question: What do you actually use? Not what I have tried or used in the past, not what I want to try, not what a client is using. But what is open on my screen on a regular Tuesday.