Over the last few months I built a pretty good writing system.
My rough draft went in. A newsletter, WordPress post, SEO package, images, and social posts came out.
Kinda like what a good content system should do, right?
And it WAS. Doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing that is.
And that was the problem.
The process was already set every week and didn't allow a whole lot of room for change.
And of course, because I genuinely enjoy building systems, I kept making it better.
I had AI helping me speed up research, compare drafts, create images, create the WordPress posts, and build the MailerLite campaigns. And it's not like I didn't need to do any of that because of course I did. The system genuinely solved problems I needed to solve.
But the problem was, at some point I started to realize that every time I had a new idea, it also came with a whole list of new jobs attached to it that I'd have to do.
There's a line used in quality improvement that says “every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets”.
My system created finished assets. Just like I planned for it to do.
But you know what else it did? It turned the thoughts I had every week into a whole production job that just ended up constraining me instead.
And you know what else? I think we do this in a lot of areas of our lives too.
We build a routine because life feels chaotic otherwise. We take on a role because somebody needs us. We follow a career path because it makes sense at the time. Then the original reason changes, but the system keeps doing exactly what we built it to do anyway.
And yeah, the systems that are obviously broken are easy to question. It's the working ones that are harder to spot.
A job can pay you. A schedule can keep everybody moving. A role can make you useful. And it can all work like it's supposed to while at the same time, something in you knows it just doesn't fit anymore.
My production system still has a job to do. And it's still fun to build and improve on. I just made sure it's a lot more flexible now.
Some ideas will be weekly newsletters. Some will end up as longer articles and essays. Some will answer specific questions people are searching for. A few will eventually turn into tools, projects, or videos. And a lot will probably end up going nowhere.
This time I'm trying to leave enough room to go wherever it takes me.
FROM THE WORKBENCH
This issue is the first test of my new setup.
The Climb is going to continue to be the weekly email. Notes From the Climb are longer essays that are still on the website and that I may tell you about in the weekly email.
I'll also let you know about any interesting projects I'm working on in case you want to follow along or be the first to get access to new tools.
A few things I'm into right now
READING The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne
I find American aristocracy and the whole history of it fascinating.
It's crazy to me how it's built. From overlapping families, schools, marriages, institutions, dinner tables, clubs, magazines, foundations, political offices, summer colonies, and friendships that survive long after the original fortunes disappear.
It means belonging in a way most of us will never understand.
Belonging means you aren't meeting important people. You're not meeting them because you already knew them when they were kids. Their parents knew your parents. You went to the same schools, spent the summer in the same places, served on the same boards, married each other's cousins, got mentioned in each other's memoirs, and discretely helped each other recover from divorces, scandals, bankruptcies, addictions, elections, and deaths.
One summer years ago, I actually found myself completely immersed in that world in one of the most personal ways possible…but didn't even realize it at the time.
But that's a story for another day.
LISTENING Next Year by Donovan Woods
This song gets me every time I hear it.
It's about living today because next year comes way sooner than we expect it to and actually, too often, never comes at all. Just a great reminder to appreciate life.
A QUESTION FOR YOU
What are the things in your life that are still working like they're supposed to and what doesn't seem like it fits anymore?
Hit reply and tell me. I'd love to know.