I recently did my July review and August prep, and I thought I’d share my process for this. My monthly reviews are more narrative-based reflection than structured planning, I’ve found that I don’t need too much top-down planning in my life (right now at least), and my GTD reviews are done on a weekly basis. However, I do find a monthly check-in with myself to be important. I typically do them on the first Sunday of the month. This is what it looks like.

Reviewing Last Month

My monthly reviews are about collecting “essence”, which is my shorthand for everything I do that captures the essence of what it felt like to be Beth in July 2026. I’ve been doing this for years now, inspired by Annie Ernaux’s The Years, which entirely changed my world view. I wrote about that elsewhere.

The home for my reviews are my Month objects in Capacities. This is what the template currently looks like.

Properties

Most of my properties relate to my aim of essence collection: obsessions, my favourite song, fave media, essence energy etc. I find looking back on previous months to be crazily powerful because of this, and they always make me smile.

I also like to take my time choosing a cover image, and then explaining why I did that. It makes it more meaningful to me, and especially so when I reflect on other months. The same thinking lies behind the ‘fave interaction’ property, and the rating property too. I like to capture the traces of my thinking, as well as the actual data.

The other properties are navigational, and the month number means I can group all my Julys together and look back on my life through that lens. The “Looking Back” query is embedded into the template for this.

Narrative

Then I move onto the writing portion of the review. I first go through all the fiction books of the month as a fun memory exercise. I read so much, and my fiction often triggers rabbit holes or new ideas, so I find reviewing them to be a good framing for the month.

After this, I work down the list of headings: the good, the bad, the learnings. It normally takes me a minute to get my brain in gear, then I find I’m listing a lot of things, with memories sparking other memories. Once I’ve remembered all I can, I go through my weekly reviews to fill in some gaps, and to offer some reflection on what happened in previous weeks. The “this month” query put this information into the month. I like the granularity of the weeks, and the tighter feedback loop it gives me. I find this sits nicely with the more zoomed out month view, which is more about higher level reflection.

Reflection continues with a query called “this month’s thoughts”. I shared my thought object type in a previous post. I love them. It’s good just to check in with the thoughts after some time has passed. This isn’t an essay-level piece of reflection, sometimes just a sentence with a timestamp.

That’s the narrative side done. It’s a lot of layered reflection which I find helpful for helping me see something I’ve overlooked, something I’ve forgotten, or just finding new angles on things. It’s very important to me to live a reflective life, and this is the infrastructure for that.

Thinking Ahead to Next Month

I do three top-down planning activities per month

1. I check our calendars: what is unusual and what has tasks (e.g. birthday presents, travel plans). As long as there’s a task created, I will get it done.

2. I ask myself if there’s something I specifically want to achieve this month: things at work, home or personal. I don’t always have something here, sometimes I just like a month of maintenance (I LOVE the concept of maintenance).

3. I ask myself how I want to feel at the end of the month. If there’s a gap to be closed there, or a project to create, then I will do that.

What I do a lot of though, is maintenance tasks. I anchored them to the first of the month because I find it really satisfying to tick off the bigger, weirder chores all together. I just find these keep things running smoothly. Weekly is too often, yearly too infrequent so I often choose monthly or every other month.

These maintenance tasks cover the fun and the mundane. Fun examples: go through my pictures and order prints, take a picture out of our living room window to make the yearly album of how the trees change throughout the seasons, check new Kindle 99p deals. Mundane: hoover the couch, clean the front door, various deep cleaning tasks…

If I give everything the date of the first of the month, then it’s a built-in reminder to a) do them or to b) reschedule them because there is a strange month coming up. For example, all the deep clean kitchen tasks make no sense for August: it’s getting ripped as I type this! So I skipped all those tasks for August.

One mindset I find very important with recurring tasks in general is that it’s not a moral failing not to complete a task list in a given day, it’s more a reminder of something that should be on my radar at the moment. This is particularly true for my recurring tasks given I created them having decided what standards I’m happy to maintain across the areas of my life. In other words, I want to do the task for a reason, it should be on my radar, ideally I’ll do it on the 1st of the month but if I’ve got plans I will just adjust and come back to it later.

Tip: Use templates to structure your process

As you can see in the screenshot, my monthly note has a lot of properties and a lot of headings. This structures the pattern I want to follow each month and makes this process repeatable. For me this is what keeps infrastructure “transparent”: if I set up my monthly template well, I don’t think about how to do the review, I just follow what is there.

This is a repeatable idea for other types of reviews: weekly, yearly or even ad-hoc check ins with yourself.

I think that’s everything for my monthly reflection and planning process. What does yours look like? :)

What I read

I read both fiction and non-fiction.

I always have a fiction book on the go. I love anything to do with spies (spies = networks = connections!), then historical fiction (particularly a family saga), and the very occasional and very short sci-fi book. Sometimes I read literary fiction, but I am a plot-driven girl through and through.

Non-fiction wise, I read pretty much anything but normally only in summer for some reason. Purchases are driven by current obsessions, or whatever is on offer on the Kindle daily deals!

When I read

Reading is at minimum a twice-daily habit for me, like brushing my teeth. It simply must happen. I’m not sure when I became so resolute in this (I typically have the resolve of a paper straw), but I’m not complaining!

I read before I go to sleep and as soon as I wake up. I never bring my phone into my bedroom, I just have my Kindle, which makes this super easy to put into action. I also read on public transport, on my lunch break, and whenever my boyfriend is watching football.

Why I read

I am always looking for connections. Connections to real life, real people, real places, concepts I know about, new ideas I’ve never come across. I am a note-taking nerd, and connected notes are my love language.

It didn’t start this way. Through my education, I read because I had to, and then I sometimes read non-fiction, but rarely fiction. In 2023, I picked up a fiction book to relax and escape, having worked myself into burnout. I started with Ken Follett’s century trilogy. It was an immersive read, but I actually enjoyed digging into all the rabbit holes more, so I just continued on this path, which brings me to today. Now, I read because I want to learn, and I want to be changed by what I read. This goes for fiction and non-fiction.

To do this, I want to spend time with the book (or rather, its highlights but I’ll come to that soon!) in an external system so I can “play” with and connect all the ideas and takeaways. This is Capacities comes in, and a fabulous tool called Readwise which syncs my Kindle highlights into Capacities.

How I read

I exclusively read Kindle books because that is the easiest way to get my highlights into Capacities. I will use my Kindle til it breaks and then likely move onto Kobo.

If there is no Kindle book, I am not going to buy the book. That is frustrating at times, and I keep a running list of the books I’m waiting for on Kindle.

But given the system I will tell you about, the friction of reading physical books is simply at odds with what I want out of reading, so it no longer works for my goals.

Before Feb 2025, I read physical books, believing that the smell of the book and the tactile nature was enough to make up for the friction of transforming my reading notes into digital notes. However I typically read a book every 2-3 days, and this got old very quickly, particularly for some of the giant books I read. For example, I never went through New York by Edward Rutherford, even though it’s one of my favourite books. It was too overwhelming to type up all the quotes before even getting to them. So, I made the switch to Kindle and I don’t regret it!

My Book Wish List

I tried many different systems for book wish lists and ultimately settled on an Amazon Shopping List, as unglamorous as it is. I find the book I want to read, check if there’s a Kindle version and if there is I add it to my shopping list. If not, I add it to my list in Capacities.

I check my shopping list every morning, after I check the Kindle daily deals. I also use BookBub to find deals. This is a recurring task you won’t see me skipping!

I still go to bookshops, I just take pics of the cover and search them on Amazon later. I am doing the A-Z challenge this year, for fiction and non-fiction, so yesterday I went to Waterstones to get inspired. This is much better than browsing Amazon as I’m sure you can imagine.

The Process

Reading Rules

I start reading any book in the same way: at least 50 uninterrupted pages. I got this from Naomi on Tiktok. After that I read chapter by chapter. I cannot DNF before 50 pages, and unless I hate a book, I try not to DNF before 100 pages. I still DNF many books!

When I read, I’m not actively looking for things to highlight, I’m trying to get into the flow of reading! But things inevitably jump out to me: things that make me think, things that confused me, famous people’s names, locations, things I disagree with. I highlight all of those, and for the less obvious ones I’ll add a little note as to why I’ve highlighted.

I continue doing this until I have finished the book, and then I will open Capacities to my ‘Unprocessed’ view. Waiting for me in Capacities is a note for the book, created with some behind the scenes magic thanks to Readwise syncing my Kindle Highlights to Capacities. I can also use the Kindle integration and email the highlights into Capacities, which is great for non-fiction because it imports the highlights and separates them into chapters, which Readwise doesn’t support. Either way, when I finish a book, I write down my initial thoughts and give it a rating. Then, typically at a different point in time, I will go through my highlights.

This view is collected automatically because of how I structure my reading notes. Each book is created as a source note in Capacities. These notes have a few properties, and one of them is ‘Processed’. This view looks for any sources without that checkbox checked. Typically after work I will open this view, pick a source and get to reviewing the highlights.

Going throughs my highlights

My first pass is the “easy” highlights: people, places, words I don’t know. I highlight the text, right click and click ‘Search with Google’. I may create a note for these things or not, totally depends. If I don’t want to do anything with those highlights I’ll just delete them.

This leaves me the “juicy” highlights. They need my brain, so I might not do this in the same session. I might need to sit with what it’s teaching me: why did I save it, which part of me did it speak to. I’ll write a comment to myself then. It might not be a particularly deep comment, but I highlighted for a reason so I want to make that reason visible.

I might also just tag a highlight. I’m currently obsessed with two ideas: maintenance, and the process™, and how they are connected. I’m tagging with those keywords, and I’ll sit down and write about them soon.

I’m learning all the time but sometimes a specific quote unlocks a simple observation or realisation, and I write about them in what I call insight notes (these are atomic notes/permanent notes if you’ve come from Zettlekasten). By creating the note from this highlight, it’s clear where it came from.

Other times it’ll prompt a further research task. I’ll capture the task in Capacities, and give it a date of my next free weekend so I can dig into it then.

I’ll also make a summary out of the highlights (for non-fiction, see this in action here), or I’ll write the plot summary for fiction. So overall, it really depends what the highlight says, what the book is and who I am at the time of reading it… Once I’ve gone through the highlights, I’ll check ‘Prcoessed’.

But as of recently, I don’t end my reviews there. Inspired by a blog, which I think was inspired by Ali Abdaal, I’ve just started using a new template for books. It’s more structured and has something delightful, and that’s “how did this book change me”.

As stated earlier, I want to be changed by what I read, so this template suggestion really spoke to me. I added my own flavour and that’s to answer the question again in a month. Sometimes it takes a while for an idea to really embed into my mind and to show up in my real life, other times I’l find myself randomly thinking of characters or settings. This one month later reminder asks me to check in with that. I do this review in another session, so there’s another checkbox for this. Once done, I check ‘proper review done’. This is just for books though. ‘Processed’ is more than enough for articles and other media types at this time.

Overall, this process properly embeds what I read into my note-taking app. Because my whole life is in Capacities, it’s functionally embedded into my life too. I write reviews, I make plans, I make tasks. Link by link, the notes become a part of this system which is the core of my personal infrastructure.

Standards in note-taking

When I first got into note-taking and reading, I had this perception that I needed to be a literature student who understood themes and tropes and observations that would make an essay marker happy. I also thought that reviews had to be long, or they weren’t worth it. I resisted doing that, and just went for the connections instead: who did I learn about, where did the book take place etc.

Over time, my personal standards became clearer. I want to know what happened in a book, and I can’t rely on my memory to tell me that, so I should rely on an external system instead: my reviews in Capacities. I want to connect to what notes I already have, therefore linking to existing or new notes must be part of my process.

The existence of these standards doesn’t mean it’s homework though! Views like ‘Unprocessed’ means my highlights are ready and waiting for me whenever. On an average week, I clear it each Sunday in part of my reviews. On busier weeks I just go with the flow. I think there’s a difference between knowing your standards and enforcing a timetable.

Find your joy

If you’ve read this and thought “Wow that sounds boring! What happened to getting lost in a book!”, then our reading-related sources of joy are different. I still get lost in books and think of characters years later, but the absolute thrill (genuinely) comes from the connected notes at the end of it. I presume I read like this because I returned to (fiction) reading through the lens of already being a note-taker.

If you find your joy(s), you can work backwards from there and craft the infrastructure that makes it easier to access. That’s why I went to Kindle and why I can’t imagine letting my Readwise subscription lapse!

New Experiment: Reading Journal

Everything you’ve read so far is about efficiency in my practices, because I find that increases the surface area for joy. But not everything is about efficiency, and to that end I’ve been enjoying spending hours on my reading journal that I’ve put together recently. I track what I read and their ratings, I can track my A-Z Challenge or the countries that show up in a nice map. It’s got a lot of crossover with Capacities, but it’s for a different reason: fun, creativity and experimentation. This is on top of the “work” for me which is the highlighting, and thinking. I just want to doodle sometimes too.

I tried doing this on paper but my lack of artistic talent nudged me back to Zinnia on my iPad, I’m enjoying the flexibility a lot!

So there’s my reading system as of July 2026. What is yours? :)

I had many reasons to dismiss it, I thought. First of all the book is 400+ pages long, published in 2001 and seemingly aimed at corporate executives, which I have most certainly never been. How could a system published in 2001 for execs work for me in the 2020s? I’ve never had an in-tray!

The answer is because came up with a time-agnostic system, based on a very sensible idea that if you know what your commitments are and you organise and review them appropriately, then you can focus on what is actually needed right now, and not hold everything else in your head, so feel much less stress as a result*. This sounds fabulous, and it really works.

There’s a quote in Making it All Work about it being a system for mind management, and I can confirm that it has transformed how my mind sounds and how I get to go through the world as a result. In this post, I’ll give a couple of reasons why.

GTD is for your whole life, not just for your job.

GTD is about mind management. Your mind is used for much more than just work, so it follows that GTD is for life. GTD requires you to think in units of projects and next actions, projects being something where you need more than one action to complete it. I generally assigned such thinking to work. How do I prepare for this event, or for this meeting?

But GTD talks about “horizons” too, and the “horizon” above next actions and projects is areas of responsibility. We all have lots of areas of life: home, family, friends, job, travel. You can think about projects and actions on this level: what home projects do I have, what trips am I planning, what do I need to do at work? This is how I approached my initial brain dump of projects and actions.

There are many actions and projects associated with each of these areas. Everything required action but I didn’t give it all the attention it needed. I have witnessed this same realisation for everyone I’ve helped get started with GTD.

Seeing that I had projects and next actions for pretty much all areas of my life demonstrated to me very plainly that GTD is not about productivity for corporate execs, but about how to approach your life. When I read the books, this was confirmed.

Here are a few of my favourite quotes from the books.

this book is not so much concerned with getting things done as it is championing appropriate engagement with your world—guiding you to make the best choice of what to do in each moment, and to eliminate distraction and stress about what you’re not doing.” (Getting Things Done, 2015, Kindle Edition)

I have referred to this phrase about 1000 times already and I will only continue. I think this is the perfect definition.

anything that is held only in your head will take up either more or less attention than it deserves. The reason to collect everything is not that everything is equally important; it’s that it’s not. (Getting Things Done, 2015, Kindle Edition)

I had to sit with this for a moment, but I think of this quote often.

Most people feel best about their work the week before they go on vacation, but it’s not because of the vacation itself. What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, organize, and renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and others. You do this so you can relax and be present on the beach, on the golf course, or on the slopes, with nothing else on your mind. I suggest you do this weekly instead of yearly, so you can bring this kind of “being present” to your everyday life. (Getting Things Done, 2015, Kindle Edition)

I couldn’t argue with this! Why wouldn’t I want every day to feel like the day before going on holiday?

To lead an effective life, we need to be able to make things happen—to engage with our world so it will supply us with the experiences and results we seek. (Making it All Work, Kindle Edition)

This doesn’t have to be career related! Big mindset shift.

Orienting to action feels good

I am a procrastinator, a worrier and have spent much of my 20s ruminating on things no amount of thinking can change. I started to get bored of that a couple of years ago, and dug into the concept of agency. I made some progress in some areas of my life, but not all.

GTD is an antidote to that: GTD orients you to next actions across all aspects of life. Sure this means paid work, but it’s also for fun things. A next action is to read more chapters of a book I’m enjoying, or researching the best hotels in Malta for my upcoming holiday, or finding inspo pics for how I want to decorate Mum’s birthday cake. It’s the fun and the mundane. The threads they share are:

1. an orientation to action

2. the fact that you do not have to hold it in your head

Incredibly simple, but incredibly helpful.

This has a remarkable similarity to how I viewed whatever “PKM” is and how I now view personal infrastructure. GTD turned out to be the very intentional action centre of my life that I had been missing. Loops are closed, everything is externalised in Capacities and propelled forward with GTD-inspired task management. I have a process that helps me break things down: everything is a project and next actions, or it’s an area with recurring tasks (which I wrote more about here). Collectively, this feels fantastic. I feel like a different person. I am calmer and more confident and that’s a nicer way to go through life.

It works really well in Capacities

I guess it makes sense that GTD has to fit into my Capacities usage in order for me to stick with it.

My next action lists, my project lists, my agenda lists and my weekly reviews are all in Capacities. My list of areas, plus all the recurring tasks for them live right alongside them.

Every task I create can easily be linked to the project, my reference materials living right alongside it. This makes the system easier to maintain and engage with because it’s all in one place.

I’m currently renovating our house top to bottom, and it’s intensely stressful and possibly the highest stakes project I’ve ever owned given the sheer investment we’ve had to put into it. When I sense myself beginning to spin, I open my project note, I see all my thoughts and my tasks and I ask one simple question: do I have a next action? If I do, I do it, if not, I can “put it down” until it’s time to review again. GTD gave me the permission to do that, to have clarity in my life, and Capacities is the home for it. It’s an exquisite combination!

Please take away this one thing

One of the lessons I learn time and time again is “think something won’t work for you but try it anyway”. Often times, it works just great. Other times it doesn’t, but you learn something about yourself along the way anyway.

As soon as I’d finished the books, I realised that it didn’t matter one bit that the book was first published in 2001 and that many examples are from corporate execs. It’s always been a system for appropriately engaging with your world, through capturing, clarifying, reviewing and taking action. That’s a system for the ages, but the mechanics of how you do that evolve with the times and our individual preferences. I wish I had looked past that years ago, but alas, I’m here now.

I believe that GTD has changed my life and brain for the better. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Are you new to GTD?

If you’re interested in getting started with GTD, check out the website for a broad overview.

The books are great too, both written by David Allen who created the system. He is a genius.

• Getting Things Done

• Making it All Work

If you want to know how to use it with Capacities I did a video on the Capacities channel.

*this is paraphrased from this quote:

The subtle effectiveness of GTD lies in its radically commonsense notion that with a complete and current inventory of all your commitments, organized and reviewed in a systematic way, you can focus clearly, view your world from optimal angles, and make trusted choices about what to do (and not do) at any moment. GTD embodies an easy, step-by-step, and highly efficient method for achieving this relaxed, productive state.

I wrote about my pretty simple system around TikTok in a previous post (tl;dr, save TikToks that make me pause, go through them once a week, extract what’s interesting, unsave, move on) but in this post I want to share a few pieces of advice that have shaped my approach to life and helped me learn how to adult!

There are only 5 things in a room

This is KC Davis’ 5 Things Tidy Method

• Trash

• Dishes

• Laundry

• Things that have a place

• Things that don’t

This is seared into my mind because it is always useful. No matter if my house is the messiest it’s ever been or just a bit untidy, I can go into one room and feel no stress in getting started. First, I will collect all the trash. Then, the dishes, then any laundry, and so on. It’s rigid enough that it removes decision fatigue and easy enough that it’s actually doable.

@domesticblistersThe OG video of my 5-things tidying method! Follow me and we’ll make cleaning less overwhelming 💜 #MentalHealth #ZodiacSign #CleanTok #Parenting

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Default Decisions

Jen is a lovely creator whose audience is mainly working mums, but there’s still a lot to learn even without kids! She shared the term ‘default decision” which put a name to something I’d had in some respect for a while. But in naming it, I was able to think about it further.

@jkattula6 decisions I don’t make anymore #corporatemom #highachievingwomen #systemsthinking #ambitiouswomen #mentalloadisheavy

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For example, I only buy one type of trainers, one type of t-shirt, I make a capsule wardrobe every season, and I use recurring tasks to tell me what days to do what chores on across all areas of my life so I never have to decide, my task list just arrives for the day in my daily note.

Knowing the term “default decision” has helped me notice decisions I have to make a lot, but that I hadn’t actually found a default for yet. I think it’s a valuable exercise for us all to try in areas of life!

Organized Chaos’ Home Management videos

Audrey makes great content around home systems, and when I started enacting it, I saw how applicable her advice is to the rest of life too.

Two themes standout the most:

You are the CEO, manager and an employee of your home, but you are not all of those things at once.

• CEO: Big-picture vision, financial decisions, goal setting, and performance reviews.

• Manager: Implements routines, delegates tasks, and ensures execution.

• Employee: Completes daily chores and tasks.

  

  @organizedchaos4You can’t be the CEO, the manager & the employee all at the same time. It’s vital to know when to wear which hat. #ceoofhome #home #cleanwithme

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This works for non-home areas too. The 12 Week Year goes viral every quarter, so I’ll use this as an example. The version of you sitting down to plan can be seen as the CEO. The manager does the weekly review, and implements changes where needed, and the worker shows up every day to work towards those goals.

I typically don’t like business-adjacent analogies, but something about this trio just works for my mind. They are clear cut roles, and I can move between them. It’s all still me, but still passing through each phase I need to live a life that is meaningful to me.

I don’t personally follow the 12 week year, but I do use my personal infrastructure to craft a meaningful life, and I have to move through each of these roles to keep that going. In practice, this means I don’t get bogged down in big picture thinking… Sometimes it’s just about maintaining routines that help you meet your goals.

Transformation mode vs maintenance mode

@organizedchaos4Does this make sense?? Do you need it explained further?? #cleaning #tidying #decluttering

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Speaking of maintenance, considering the differences between transformation mode and maintenance mode has been a helpful framework for thinking through problems. The bit of wisdom that really brought this home for me was that you need to transform something before you can maintain it. Audrey says that maintenance “sustains”, so if it’s not a situation you want to sustain, then it asks for transformation.

This gave me permission to declutter and to finally get the home renovation that had been in my mind for years started. I approached the renovation with one Audrey-inspired aim in mind: make maintenance mode easier. I work from home so it’s where I need to be creative, where I need to relax and where I need to do good work. Therefore I need to maintain it to the standard that keeps my brain happy. I know that after my ongoing renovation is done, it’ll be even easier because I’m designing it that way. It’s a bit of a mess right now (you wouldn’t believe the amount of cardboard boxes…), but I know that it’s because I’m in transformation mode. In October, that should be done and I can maintain. I’ve got the recurring tasks waiting for me already.

It’s always now

@emily_winwoodeven in a week it’ll still be now 🙄 #cleaning #adhdhacks #adhdcheck #adhdwomen #audhd

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I am so grateful this creator took her phone out whilst doing the dishes and filmed this. I’ve shared this phrase with many people and I think they’ve generally found it as useful as I have!

It helped me understand that if something needs to be done, it needs to be done. It’s always now, so I may as well just do it. It’s a very simple truth of adult life. I’m pretty good at taking action when needed, but this has plugged the gaps when I was slacking, often when it’s time to do the dishes, hoover, or upload invoices to accounting software. They’re three chores guaranteed to kill any motivation I have!

I think this is another form of default decision. If I see something that needs to be done, then there should be no deliberation, because it’s always now.

10 more minutes

I randomly saw this video and knew that I had to implement it because it’s applicable everywhere, so I created a shortcut on my phone that launches a 10 minute timer from my home screen.

@clararpeircecould reallly apply this to anything #10moreminutes #productivityhack

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This works really nicely with “It’s always now”. I’m finding that most of these tasks I put off don’t even take the full timer!

Wrapping up

TikTok is not all bad and the creators on there have truly help shape my 20s and I’m grateful for it. I wonder what I’ll learn next!

This post is about my trip to Leeds to buy said ring, but it’s also about personal infrastructure, which I consider to be the connected tools and routines that support your life. This is a real look at mine. I want to show what it actually means to have personal infrastructure. This reads a bit like my diary, but if personal infrastructure supports your whole life, I guess that makes sense!

When social feeds provide inspiration!

I love scrolling. I scroll, I save, and each Sunday I review my saves. During one scroll, I saw the lovely Daniella Draper ad and didn’t even wait til Sunday, I saved the image to Capacities immediately. You can see I thought about it so much it was the image of the week.

I’ve never bought expensive jewellery before, and this would be made to order so I wanted to try it on in person before committing. Our closest store is Leeds, so we booked a weekend trip. The weekend arrived and I was too ill to go (this happens a lot...), so I just moved on with life, knowing that I’d get to Leeds one day.

Fast forward just a couple of weeks, I was scrolling again and I saw this tweet about elephant armour. It intrigued me, so I saved it to Raindrop. Sunday arrived, so I went through that week's bookmarks and came back to the tweet. I confirmed that the caption was true, and decided I’d quite like to see that, and I’d quite like to buy that ring stack. It was time to re-plan the trip.

I created a Trip object type in my personal space and then created a Leeds trip object. As you can see it was not a deeply planned trip! I was a woman on a simple mission.

You can see that I linked to an object called Leeds in the Location property. I used the backlinks and unlinked mentions to see if I’d taken any notes in the past few years about Leeds which should influence my trip. Turns out not this time, but for big cities like London and Paris, I have a fabulous list of historically-adjacent things to visit, or places that have popped up in my reading.

I’ve become very interested in travelling more now I’m a bit better, so I went down a rabbit hole and found some travel apps. I wasn’t super happy with any of them, so vibe coded my own actually, but I needed something I could take on the go. Mine was only on my desktop. I tried committing to Tripsy. I like the map visualisation and how you can orient yourself to your hotel. I pinned the places we wanted to go and had that on my phone ready for my trip.

Friday, 5th June

The day of the trip arrived. On the train, I started writing this post and I updated Thursday’s day object. I also addressed the tasks I had scheduled for Friday but obviously wouldn’t get to. The ‘excuse’ option comes in handy here. All of this was done in Capacities and none of it required Wifi!

Then I got my Kindle out and continued reading A Stranger in Corfu, which is the latest in my list of interesting spy novels.

I read exclusively on my Kindle because highlighting is a way of life for me. I make highlights for various reasons: to remind myself to google something, to capture a plot point, to think more deeply on a specific excerpt, to capture something that made me think of my life. Anything I want to engage with further for whatever reason. Whilst I wasn’t connected to Wifi at this time, I knew that as soon I was, something behind the scenes would talk to Kindle which would talk to Readwise which would talk to Capacities, and that I’d have a Source object waiting for me with all my highlights.

We soon arrived in Leeds.

We walked straight to our hotel to drop the bags off, and then we went out for lunch and cheers-ed to the first weekend break I’ve been well enough to go on for a while! 🍻

I don’t drink but I love the taste of a Mojito, so I order a non-alcoholic version wherever I see one. I naturally tended to this habit anyway (I love a default decision), but I remembered that I read a book which made me decide to elevate this to a thing™ that I do.

When writing this post I could not remember which book that was but I was determined to find it. I knew it was from a book, meaning I could look at my fiction book query to find all the possibilities. I decided to do that later because I needed to get ready for the elephant armour visit! But as I closed my laptop I witnessed my brain going down different paths in order to try to find it in my mind. Something you’ll hear me say a lot in Capacities videos is that linking gives you multiple paths back to something. I had one path back to this lost quote: it would be somewhere in a source object. The second path emerged when I remembered that I have a tag called “how I want to travel”. I opened that tag, and there it was! In another spy book of course.

I need a place to write my Mojitos reviews, so I’ll show you my Mojito Tracker.

When I took my screenshot for this post, I saw that I started it on the date night that celebrated my personal infrastructure post being published. I’d psyched myself out of posting for months, and it felt big to finally celebrate. I had forgotten that detail (too focused on that mojito taste!) but my meta review remembered for me and served me a timely reminder, all because I made a simple link. This is the magic of networked notes. 💫

But anyway, back to Leeds.

We walked around the city, the places we went being captured in Time Atlas, which is one of my fave apps ever. I don’t think I’ve shared it before but if you are into life logging, you might enjoy. I also checked that my location tracking was working to unfog the world on another favourite app, Fog of World.

I love having the visual representations of where I’ve been with literally no effort required from me. Both Time Atlas and Fog of World do this. I was very ill in the second half of 2025, after being generally unwell through most of my 20s thanks to chronic illness. It’s been a personal battle to gain confidence again getting out in the world, and I must credit these two apps for encouraging me to be brave and try. I didn’t think gamification worked for me - wrong. It works just great. This is one of my favourite insights: think it won’t work for you but try it anyway. I just keep learning that lesson, and I have a note for it, so I can link every time it comes up in my life in my reflections!

Then it was time to find the ring shop. I walked in, and the assistant asked if we were just looking or if we wanted some help. I opened Capacities, found the picture and said please help me find this! She zoomed in on the pic, and amazingly they had the exact one I wanted in store! 25 mins later I was the proud owner of the ring I wanted which Joe actually bought for me as an anniversary gift. Thank you Joe! 💍

We carried on with our day and eventually came back to the hotel room. We watched Rivals episode 6 (if you know you know), and then read on our Kindles, more highlights waiting to sync behind the scenes. Every day I fill in a day object. The ring was the the pic of the day naturally.

Saturday, 6th June

In the morning, I finished my book, then opened my laptop to my Source note to write down my thoughts on the book. I write down my thoughts first before checking out other reviews online. I thought it was a really interesting concept but a tough read at times, and I wondered if that is why it’s average was lower that I’d expect.

I typically review my highlights in a different session to writing down my initial thoughts. I want all my highlights in Capacities to be processed because I highlighted for a reason! To ensure I don’t forget to process any, I have a simple checkbox property in my Source type called ‘Processed’. I have a query called ‘Unprocessed’ and I have a weekly task (on Sunday of course!) to review my Unprocessed query. It’s a very simple system, but it’s maintainable and in line with my reading goals.

With that book finished and a train ride ahead, I needed to find my next read. I checked my ever growing Kindle library and realised the Kindle app is terrible for discoverability. It’s something I need to solve in my personal infrastructure, so I captured that thought to my daily note through my Raycast integration which I have mapped to Cmd D on my laptop.

I knew I would resurface that thought no later than Sunday, which is when I do my weekly review.

Then it was time to put the laptop and Kindle away, and go find this elephant armour that made me book the trip! It was horrible weather, so one Uber later (whilst tracking if I’d reach level 101 on Fog of World - I did not), we arrived. We had a drink and a breakfast sandwich and talked about our learnings from the trip. I text my Capacities daily note our thoughts, knowing I’d pick them up in my weekly review too.

It was a big museum, we wandered around and found the model elephant. It was strikingly large and very impressive. We spent some time looking at it, and I was pleased I’d seen it with my own eyes. Thank you to that Tweet for showing me!

Then our trip was over, and I got the train to my parents’ city for a visit before heading up north again. As we pulled away from Leeds train station, I hit level 101 on Fog of World. A great end to a great trip!

My Dad then picked me up, and he told me that him and Mum had ignored my advice to stay far away from the new Jack Ryan film and they decided to watch it anyway. They understood why I gave that advice after! This is an illustration of one of my favourite quotes: you cannot learn from my mistakes, only from your own, which I have a note for so I can link to it whenever it appears in my life in my reflections. I use this a lot.

Our conversation also reminded me of something I’d seen in a review about the Jack Ryan film and I knew I’d linked the review to my Top Gun Maverick note. I couldn’t remember the name of the source, but I knew I’d find it in Top Gun Maverick’s source note. I opened it, found the quote and we talked about it. I like to timestamp such interactions with ‘/now’. I’ll be able to discover it later, just as I discovered our previous memorable interactions when I opened Dad’s note to get this screenshot. It’s really nice!

After, I made us lunch and I took my rings off and put them on top of the microwave before washing the dishes. I paused after I did this, because I remembered another note I have in Capacities: Rings on the Microwave. This is what I call a trace: things that follow you through life, or that you notice which provide a crutch for reflection.

My mum always puts her rings on the microwave. She had the same stack for a long time, and then it was sadly joined by an Ashes to Glass ring after my Grandad died. When I eventually had a stack to protect from soapy water when washing dishes, I followed her lead and started taking mine off and placing them on the microwave too.

I took the first pic in 2023. These were my strong independent woman rings, the eternity band is the ring I splurged £60 on after leaving my job for PKM Beth. I felt so bad about that purchase!

In 2026, it’s my Oura ring for tracking my health (or lack thereof…), the repurposed eternity ring that holds said Oura ring in place because the sizing kit was not accurate, and my new Daniella Draper stack, kindly purchased by my lovely boyfriend as an anniversary gift on the first trip I’ve felt really confident to go on since my health woes.

I stood at the sink reflecting on what had changed in 3 years. That reflection lives in the note, with the new picture. I’ll keep that private!

Personal infrastructure

This post could go on and on. What will I do with all the pics I’ve taken, and the thoughts they prompted? What effects will this have on how we book travel and plan things and how will I enact that in my system? What will I say about it and the rest of this week in my review? These are just the threads prompted by my mini-trip, it’s not even the normal rhythm of my days!

This is my personal infrastructure in action. It is the supporting structure of my brain and of my life. It’s custom built and continually in evolution. It responds to the goals I currently have: I want to be receptive to the world I find myself in, I want to give myself space to engage with my curiosity, I want to take action and I want to live a reflective life and then take action based on my reflections.

It’s been fun to zoom in on a specific part of my personal infrastructure. If you’d like to see something in more detail, please let me know!

This is somewhat of a thinking-out-loud post about how I’m trying to let go of rigid beliefs that don’t serve my practices. My approach needs some context: I’m talking about my kind of note-taking which comes from having curiosity as a personal value, and a system in place to help me sit with and develop that curiosity. I don’t know what I’d do with my free time if not reading or learning, and I have no idea how to learn without writing down the interesting things that come from it. This is the way I make sense of the world. I also believe that everything is somehow connected, and life experience and research serves to uncover those connections. I feel the most human when I find connections in the real world or within my notes, because my notes are the artefacts of how I’m experiencing and learning about the world. So needless to say, everything you’re about to read is entirely personal, I just want to share some thoughts in case someone else has fallen into the same traps I have over the years.

Where Did This Linear Idea Come From?

First of all, what is the linear note-taking practice? I’ll take it from my own post about my note-taking practice in 2023.

It sounds so logical and straightforward here, as if it’s all possible to do in an afternoon, and as though I should be concerning myself with doing all of it every day.

So I started to wonder about the origin of these conclusions. I think it might be from my years of consuming workflow content, and creating it myself. My hypothesis is that content creators (like me) take the average of their workflows and spend a lot of time drafting a piece that explains it as logically and as clearly as possible. I don’t set out to “hide” things, but I can’t believe anyone wants to hear about the three times recently that I couldn’t follow my exact process for whatever reason, so I just leave that detail out. Writing is linear, so it unfolds in a linear manner.

But if many content creators take the average of their processes, and you read a lot of people’s content, which roughly talks about the same things, then this idea emerges that a good workflow is linear and that it is done in a certain order. Again, this is just a hypothesis, but I must now admit I’ve perpetuated the idea that processes are neat with a beginning and an end, but I don’t consciously think that’s true at all. I think it’s a real mess, frankly, and leaning into that is ok.

The mess is ok, it’s being looked after!

What do I mean by a mess? I view note-taking as a system for sense-making, of whatever it is you need to make sense of. This is its purpose in my world. The notes themselves are artefacts of what you have been making sense of. Note-taking apps give you the option to connect some of those artefacts together, and this lays the foundations for making sense of a bigger picture along the way. But sense-making is an inherently messy process, because thinking isn’t linear. I noticed that sense-making is often in the present tense. It’s the process of doing and becoming, and a note-taking app is where you can do that. I believe the best type of note-taking app is a networked one. Not files and folders and hierarchy, but a flat hierarchy with connections, because that’s the easiest way to literally go with the flow of the network.

Whilst I’m saying this now, I still have the temptation to follow one thread through my research. For example, I will research one famous person and tell myself I’ll focus just on them... But that person is related to events I’ve read about before, and they have famous children who were also involved in events I know about. I don’t want to move past that in the name of the original thread, yet I feel the temptation to race to “the end” of the note-taking process.

I must step back and evaluate this (here I am, evaluating).

Networked note-taking apps make it safe to get lost in the network. I know I have the artefacts of my journey (the notes) and the connections between them (the links) as anchors. This is what the graph view shows you. My notes hold several “lines” of enquiry. Some will be used soon, some will become interesting in a year, in a new context and some lines will intersect with each other without me even noticing. This is itself a result of networked note-taking.

None of this means that you have to follow a strict process to get there or that there’s a perfect finished note at the end of it. It never stops, the system is alive, because if you keep reading interesting things, if you link those things to notes you already have, and you stay curious, then the process never actually ends. The threads get messier (look at your graph views!) but the mess gets more magical. I wrote about this magic in on note-taking, connections and finding appreciation for my kitchen taps. The point of a note-taking app is its your location for externalising this mess and for sense-making.

Where to go from here?

So I find there is a tension between the linear workflow I think I have, and the messier middle I actually spend all my time taking notes in. I am trying to figure out how to square this. Is it that it’s a linear workflow through time, rather than through steps? And that the process is a menu, and what I choose to eat one day is based on a myriad of influences? Embracing the mess means going with those interests, feeling secure that I have the traces of my interests safely in Capacities.

But whilst none of that is untrue, I know myself enough that I need a middle ground. I need a system that allows me to embrace the mess but has feedback loops to review some of the mess if I so desire. This is where my submission to the note-taking-nature-metaphor board comes in. I think a successful approach to personal systems, both in mindset and in practice, is to build your personal systems like a plant pot on a saucer.

If seeds are ideas and inputs, your time spent with them is the water. Most water goes to the roots and the plant (the notes) starts to grow. There will be overflow, some water will seep out into the plate. but the plate is there precisely to catch it. For me, the plate is useful queries or review routines to close the loops I’ve opened and to prune the notes I’ve made.

But the pot (your note-taking app) is the container for all sorts of different thinking, and that container holds a lot of your sense-making. There are some incredible, natural processes happening in that plant pot. Give it input, give it time, give it sunlight, it will grow.

Much like with plants, it’s really nice to witness the growth too. So to step away from greenery for a moment, commit to engaging with curiosity in your note-taking app. It’s a safe yet magical place to be!

I’m still thinking on this, but wanted to share nonetheless. Let me know if you have any thoughts!

I also have a big list of examples for my plant pot metaphor, let me know if you want to know more about them.

I’m defining maintenance here as a collective name for a range of recurring actions that you take to uphold standards across the areas of your life. How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra taught me the important of maintenance for public infrastructure, so I simply applied that idea into my personal life. Then I ended up reading Getting Things Done (GTD) and realised just how aligned it was.

A key reminder in the book is that projects are finished but maintenance is forever. This is true in both the personal and public realms. We need to maintain friendships as much as the city needs to fix potholes in the roads. Maintenance is not like goal-setting or project planning where you are gearing towards things that you can achieve, a loop you can close. Maintenance is about upholding standards through consistent action. It has to coexist alongside your goals and projects, as a constant presence. I’m obsessed with task management as a concept, and I realised that maintenance is simply recurring tasks throughout all the areas of your life.

I moved to a maintenance-forward mindset in 2026 and I cannot overstate the benefits I have felt from it. I feel like a different person! I’ll go into the personal and philosophical side in later posts, but I figured a more practical post would be helpful first of all. So in this post I’ll share advice on how you could try this out too. Part 1 is about understanding the shape of your life and what standards you wish to set for it. Part 2 is the all-important translation into recurrent action.

Part 1

Identify your areas

You may have already done this exercise as part of GTD, PARA or the life wheel that pops up each December. These are more specific than domains like work and life, think a bit more specifically. Here are mine.

After I decided on my initial areas, I also looked at all my projects and found the ones that I (implicitly) never expected to actually finish: finding my values, becoming a better communicator, working out my personal beliefs and philosophies. Life experience updates them often, so I need to maintain my attention towards them. As such, I changed their types from projects to areas and have completed my list for now. This list will change over time I’m sure.

Decide on your standards for those areas

This when you ask yourself a lot of questions about the areas of your life and what you want from them. Before I share some example questions, I want to make a very important point: “standards” do not implicitly mean high standards. Standards just mean agreed-upon baselines. If the standard isn’t achieveable, it’s pointless. There is a standard shipping container size, a range of standard paper sizes, standard glass sizes. So when considering standards here, it doesn’t mean aiming for perfection. It is simply a conscious decision on what your acceptable baseline is. It’s also deeply personal. Don’t be swayed by what other people’s standards look like, just commit to engaging with the idea of them. I am not advocating for a life full of having a spotless house and other such aspirational standards!

Anyway, some questions I’ve pondered for my areas:

• What does it mean to you to be a good friend or family member? What does showing up for others look like?

• What does a well maintained home feel like? What are the most important areas of the home for how you live in it?

• I want to continue working on my personal values and belief systems whilst upholding a note-taking practice, what does that mean for how I spend my days? How much time can I consistently give it?

Write down any initial thoughts you have first, messily is fine! If you need some extra help, you could ask AI to ask you some questions. This means it’s still you thinking, but guided by something else.

This is an ongoing process and that’s fine. It can also be very overwhelming to do it all at once. I’d start with 1-3 most important areas. For me: home maintenance, healthy life and my personal infrastructure. Not all areas can be important at once. There’s a reason I’ve barely published anything in the past year!

Once you’ve done this, you’ve created a clear vision of what your life should look like (in at least one area). Now it’s time to translate that into action.

Part 2: Translate into action

Think about the specific action first, then how and when to repeat it.

What actions do you need?

I’ll take family and friends as an example. My 20s have been ruled by chronic illness, as such I was not always a present friend. I wanted to change that, but what did that look like to me? What standards did I want to set?

I wanted to

• regularly reach out to people

• reply to people who had taken the time to reach out to me

• remember everyone’s birthdays

• organise meet ups that I probably wouldn’t have to cancel

• cheer them on during big life events.

The GTD concept of a task is that it has to be concrete and specific: one discrete action. So let’s break it down further

• Reply to all pending messages

• Check calendar for upcoming birthdays

• Buy birthday card for each person

• Reach out to organize a meetup if health permits

• Check social media to see the life events

• Message people you have not spoken to for a while

How often should you ideally do them?

Once I had the actions, then I could think about how often a task should recur. This is where recurring tasks come in.

• Reply to all pending messages → Once a week is reasonable for the full sweep, as I reply more often in general.

• Check calendar for upcoming birthdays → In my monthly planning, check upcoming birthdays

• Check social media to see the life events → I do this daily, then send one of my cards if needed.

A belief I had to let go of during this process is that recurring tasks mean frequent tasks. Once a year works too! For example I realised it was much easier to bulk buy cards then go every other week or so. I have a drawer full of lovely cards and a selection of stamps. This task recurs once a year.

And sometimes it might not be time for a schedule. If I’m honest, I’m not well enough yet to regularly organise meetups. I just take the opportunity when I feel like it presents itself.

When should you schedule them?

Before you can put the recurring task together, you have to know when it should be scheduled. Where do you start with this? I found the best thing to do for these new recurring tasks was to anchor them to something I’m already doing, to benefit from that momentum.

Sunday ended up being a general anchor day for me. I already did a Sunday review each week, but it was very different to the GTD style one I now do. I just expanded the activities I do in that review, to include the weekly friends and family check in.

Anchor as many actions as you can to something you already do. You can adjust as needed later.

Repeat for other areas

Repeat this process for your other life areas, but take your time doing this. Maintenance is forever, you don’t have to speed run this process. I’ve been doing this for months! In the end, you essentially end up with a map of what you want the standards of your life to look like, and the supporting structure that will help you realise it.

If you want to know more examples from other domains, let me know! You might also find this table a structured way to go through this:

The Capacities set up

You may be wondering how this looks in Capacities. Because maintenance is about recurring actions that you take to uphold standards across the areas of your life, I wanted to create area objects. So I created a simple area object type to start, and just added each task and then the recurrence settings.

I’ve tweaked it somewhat since. These objects are the hub for everything to do with a top-level overview of what that area means to me at a given time. Therefore I also added the standards table in there so I can adjust as necessary but also see them all at a glance. I also added more blocks properties to create sections: comments, recurring tasks and one off tasks. I will periodically visit these pages and sort text into the correct sections as necessary (and yes, there’s a recurring task for this too!)

As always with Capacities, we recommend that you start simple. I do recommend an area object type because when you create a task you can type @{area name} which is helpful. But it doesn’t even need any properties, it’s just a container to start. You can adjust as you go.

Then you have to do the work!

So far, you have broken down your life areas, decided on the standards, found specific actions you can take, and scheduled as a cadence that is worth a try. Now, it’s time to do the tasks. As Bob Doto once said: “a system for writing is not a substitute for effort”. I extrapolated that lesson and have never forgotten it.

In Capacities you can open the central calendar to see what you need to think about today, without seeing anything else on the global task list. To be honest, this is half the benefit of the setup. There are a lot of maintenance tasks in life but they don’t all need your attention right now. You have permission to let go. By treating maintenance as recurring tasks with a date, you are offloading the complexity of scheduling it all to the magic that makes a recurring task work. You only see what you need, and nothing else. All you need to do is act.

Even if you use a paper planner, this system can hold all those recurring tasks for you and you can pull them into your planner as needed for the all important environmental reminder.

Now of course you will inevitably be shown tasks that you could normally do but might not be able to do on that day. No problem, reschedule it to a better day and do it then, or just leave the overdue reminder in Capacities. I was away the past two days so hadn’t done everything. This is the top of my daily note today:

I’m grateful for the reminder to do the task, and I’ll work through the list today.

Alternatively skip or excuse the recurrence. For example I’m away again this weekend, so all my Sunday tasks will be done on either Thursday or the following Tuesday, I can postpone them and forget until I’m ready and enjoy my trip!

In general I’d say that most of the time, your planned schedule should work. If you find yourself rescheduling most occurrences, change the recurrence pattern and go again. It’s all an experiment and it’s normal to make changes.

The goal is a well maintained life, that does not mean a perfect life and it does not need 100% completion rate to work. But this exercise gives you a course to correct to when needed.

Conclusion

This is a long post, and that is representative of the detail and thinking needed to create this system. If you resonated with any of this, I hope you give this a try.

Start small and keep intentional. Pick one area, figure out your standards, make discrete actions for it, and figure out how often you can dedicate time for it. Try it for a month and let me know how it feels!

I’ll go into this more in later posts, but yes I do currently believe that the secret to (my) life is recurring tasks. Even if I don’t live like this forever, it’s been remarkably fun, calming and satisfying thus far.

Let me know if you have questions!

There’s a commonly discussed problem in this online space: working on your tools instead of in them. This framing is too flat: it treats tools as the site of the problem and the single site for a solution, and it forgets that these tools are part of a bigger system of your life, with inflows and outflows. This tool-first conditioning is not helpful and it’s one cause of the dreaded Shiny New App Syndrome. We need to think systems first.

To be more precise, I think we should be thinking in terms of personal infrastructure¹. Where personal infrastructure is the connected tools + routines that reliably surface the right info at the right time with low ongoing effort to support you in your life. For me, personal infrastructure has replaced the ever-unconvincingly defined ~PKM~. This post will explain why.

• Why Infrastructure?

• More on personal infrastructural networks

• Maintenance is not a moral failing

• The Aim Is Transparency

  • Is this a node issue?

  • Is this a connection issue?

  • Is this a maintenance issue?

  • Is this a capacity issue?

• So Personal Infrastructure or PKM?

• Sources

Why Infrastructure?

I realised this after reading Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works², the book that opened my eyes to the beauty of infrastructure. Four core ideas stuck with me from the book, and they underpin everything that follows:

1. Infrastructural systems are networks with nodes and connections (much like a networked note‑taking app).

2. When infrastructure works, it’s transparent: we don’t notice it, we can take it for granted.

3. Energy is the currency of the material world, and infrastructure is built to reduce the amount of energy needed to accomplish a goal.

4. By reducing the time and energy we need for basic tasks, good infrastructure frees up the time, energy, and attention we need to do other things.

The example that stuck with me most in the book was taps. Let me explain: a water system is a network made of nodes and connections that exists to reduce the energy required for me to get clean water. When the system is working, it is transparent: I do not think about where the water comes from or how it gets to me, I just fill up my water bottle. Because that system exists and is maintained by others, my time, energy, and attention are freed up for other things, such as writing this post.

In my thinking, I’ve seen how my “pkm”/note-taking/life practices echo these ideas. I’ve spent years thinking about personal systems, but the infrastructure book gave me what feels like the final piece to tie all my thinking together. I can now see my systems as my own personal infrastructure: a transparent network that allows me to live my life.

This reframes everything for me. Personal infrastructure is the infrastructure that supports my lived experience. It’s not top-down management (personal knowledge management always felt icky). It doesn’t start and end with notes on my interests, or task management. It’s everything, everywhere, all at once.

More on personal infrastructural networks

I think that personal infrastructure is the network of intentionally connected tools and routines that help you run your life with less friction. Let’s break that down with the help of the core ideas from Chachra’s book.

Networks are made of nodes and connections. Systems are nodes and connections organized around a purpose³. In the case of personal systems, the purpose is something like supporting your life in a way that’s meaningful to you.

Nodes in this context are the tools you use in your life, both physical and digital. Think of them as taps in your plumbing system. My tools include Capacities, Apple Reminders, Google Calendar, Raindrop, Readwise Reader and my paper planner.

To me, connections in personal infrastructural systems range from literal integrations between tools, like Google Calendar showing up inside Capacities, to the routines and habits that move information between them manually, such as capture and review routines.

This matters because a tool on its own is just a container. The connections create the paths that move information to where you’ll actually see it at the right time. They determine where things enter the system, how they move, and where they surface again when needed.

When those paths exist, you don’t have to remember as much, so the system takes less effort to run. For example, I don’t have to return to Twitter to search for the exact tweet that will spark my next rabbit hole, I go to Raindrop where I know I save all my tweets.

A more relatable example is found in my quest to find the right task app that would help me actually execute on my tasks: I could never remember to check a task app because my work happens elsewhere. The fix to my task management dilemma was so simple in hindsight: put the tasks literally right in front of me. Not in a different window in my computer, but next to the keyboard I spend all day typing on, so I could remember the tasks exist and I’d have an easy way to check them. It takes much less energy than my previous failures did, even though it relies on manual routines to make it work.

In infrastructure terms, my task management dilemma was never a node problem, it was a connection problem. The winning planner wasn’t inherently special (though I do like it). Any planner works as long as it’s right next to me, in a concrete way that apps on my laptop cannot compete with.

If you have these connections in place, swapping nodes out is much easier. Last year, I switched from Todoist to Apple Reminders for some aspects of task management. My boyfriend and I have shared lists in Apple Reminders for the house, and I thought it would be sensible to have one place for tasks. It was just an experiment at first, but I liked it enough and stuck with it. It turned out to be an easy switch because the connections stayed the same: my task review and action routines, the shortcuts I use via Raycast to add tasks, and my approach to task management itself. Again, it’s the connections that make my system, not anything inherently special about Apple Reminders.

So what does this reframe actually do? It shifts focus away from tools and toward how information works between them. In other words, it blows the problem right open. We zoom out from nodes and try to see systems. What’s difficult about this is that no one can sell you your system. You can buy components, but you still have to build the connections and do your maintenance. That’s how we get to personal infrastructure.

Maintenance is not a moral failing

“Infrastructure” as a term sounds big; it sounds like you need to be wearing a hi-viz jacket to operate it 👷‍♀️, but that is not the case. You just need connected tools (nodes) working together to support your life.

Our lives change constantly, and we should embrace that. But if personal infrastructure is what supports our lives, then we must also accept that the personal infrastructure will change too. Downstream of this is accepting maintenance as a welcome practice, not something to avoid.Maintenance is what permits the changes, which keeps the system working. It’s inevitable and valuable. It is not a moral failing to need to spend some time on your systems.

We know this from public infrastructure. Maintenance is built into project costs and jobs are created for it. When something is in need of maintenance, you notice it, such as potholes on the road. Maintenance teams take care of the issue, then that infrastructural system can return to its magical property of transparency, and you get to enjoy the smooth road going forward.

Personal infrastructure works the same way, except you’re the entire team: you are the engineer, the manager, the construction worker, and the end user. That’s a lot of roles, but it’s all for you, meaning you can go at your own pace, in a way customised for your needs, toward an outcome whose rewards you get to enjoy. The cost of that is some maintenance, and that’s ok.

Much of this maintenance task is outsourced to the makers of the tools we use through updates, bug fixes and new features. But that’s not the end of the road. No tool will organise your life and give you the results you want if you don’t show up for it with processes that support your life. What routines do you need? What review process? You’ve got to connect the tools you are using to your life.

This is the core misunderstanding of tool-first thinking: we’ve been sold the idea that the right app will save us, when what we actually need is infrastructure, because the things that go into supporting your life are bigger than the boundary of one tool. You have to craft and maintain your systems to keep that transparency, but when you do, it just works.

The Aim Is Transparency

Let’s talk more on that transparency, and how you can identify what is preventing it.

Infrastructure should be invisible until there is a problem. If transparency is the aim then friction is the biggest signal you can listen to. We should be curious about friction we experience. I treat it like a problem to solve when I notice it, and like a part of the maintenance that is required to maintain transparency.

Here are some examples of questions you could ask, with recent examples from my own experience:

Is this a node issue?

As mentioned above, no task app could beat the environmental reminder of my paper planner.

Is this a connection issue?

My core mobile capture method is via a Shortcut from WhatsApp to Capacities’ daily note. I recently had a day where shortcuts refused to run, and I had no idea what to do because my reliable connection was broken! After a few seconds of confusion, I realised I could just open Capacities and add it manually, but as soon as I had chance, I fixed the shortcut issue and returned to the input method I’m used to.

Is this a maintenance issue?

I’ve been using Capacities since 2022, and in that time we have released many updates. Some have required my time to adjust workflows, such as when we introduced variable queries. By investing time in converting old queries into the variable queries ones, I now save so much time every day. For example, my whole weekly review now depends on variable queries. I get to my Sunday thinking time faster than I did before because the information is automatically there for me with no manual changes to queries required. The maintenance time was worth it. 🔧

Is this a capacity issue?

I had to accept I was reading and highlighting more articles than I wanted to process in Capacities, so I reduced my inflow. I’m in a heavy thinking and writing phase at the moment, and less of a reading phase. I change with the seasons, and my systems must too. I don’t need to change how the parts work together, at times, I need to reduce the amount I feed it.

These are examples of different problems that require different approaches to fix them. The more clarity you find in asking yourself similar questions, the less friction you will experience and the more transparent your systems will feel. With this comes comforting reliability, lower cognitive load, with less energy needed to get there.

So Personal Infrastructure or PKM?

Systems are made of nodes and connections that work together for a common purpose. Personal infrastructure compels me because good infrastructure is transparent and I feel my systems have that property, and I am living the benefits of it.

There are endless think pieces about working on your apps versus working in them, and I wonder if we need to zoom out to the personal infrastructural level: don’t just think about tools; think about them within your routines and habits too. Don’t expect tools to solve all problems out of the box; accept that maintenance is part of the deal. Life changes constantly so the supporting systems around us have to change as well.

Taking all of this into account, I’d like to suggest we reframe PKM away from top-down management and toward infrastructural thinking, because top-down management doesn’t fit how we actually live. Networks that flow in all directions make more sense to me⁴. Noticing the network (the nodes, the connections, the maintenance required to keep the system together) changed how I think about the role of tools and gave me a better explanation for why certain things work and others don’t.

This understanding will keep evolving I’m sure, but I’m enjoying this new view of my personal systems. I’d love to know your thoughts!

Sources

1. I first saw this term on are.na

2. Deb Chachra How Infrastructure Works

3. Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

4. I think this is part of the “network mindset shift” which is a concept I learned from Impact Networks by David Ehrlichman. You can also read about the network mindset shift in Ehrlichman’s Medium article too.

I’ve always liked connections. My outlet for this for the past 5.5 years has been a networked note-taking app. I’ve experienced what is apparently called the “network mindset shift”, where I understand that everything is connected and I view the world as complex webs of relationships. I’m fully convinced of this and I think I always have been, ever since my Grandma told me about the Lincoln-Kennedy connections and I printed out a list of them to carry with me like it was gold. Connections are gold, urban legend or not.

But anyway, back to note-taking. I think using a networked note-taking app was the key to learning how to actually deal with the overwhelm that comes with this idea that everything is connected. These apps give connections a home; all I have to do is write them down. I see life as a journey of uncovering connections, and I expect my note-taking habit will capture a lifetime of them. In that way, my notes are artefacts of an ongoing process of uncovering connections, and along the way it shows me how to make sense of the world and of myself. But I uncovered a new angle to this recently when reading How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra. I’ll admit that I have barely paid infrastructure a second thought in my life, except for marvelling at how on earth Frankfurt Airport works. This book gently showed me how to see infrastructure, and I now have an emotional connection to the kitchen tap and many thoughts about note-taking as personal infrastructure, which I want to discuss today.

This book taught me that we can define infrastructure by that which we take for granted, which deepened my gratitude for these systems that allow me to live my life. It also taught me that infrastructure gives people agency. For example, I can choose what to do with my time (read and take notes!) rather than having to think about fetching clean water. When problems arise with my house (and believe me they do), I can rely on the telephone network to contact a tradesperson, who can drive to my house on well maintained roads. I can work with my colleagues in Germany over the internet with no effort at all. Infrastructure lets me take all this for granted, which was a huge lesson for me. I feel both humbled and empowered by it.

Whilst the book was generally fantastic, it introduced to me one specific concept that has not left my mind since, that of ‘systemic sublime‘. First of all, I think the phrasing is delicious, but second of all the implications this has had on my thought-process are wonderful because it named something I’d long felt but lacked the words for, and doing so within the context of infrastructure set off all sorts of thinking.

Let’s start with what it is. Chachra found the term in Tim Carmody’s Every Cup of Coffee Is a Spectacle of Logistics, a short article talking about two other articles (connections! rabbit holes!) whose message is about how things arrive in our hands, the journeys they go on to get there, and how interesting that process is when you take a step back. Carmody names that concept the ‘systemic sublime’.

Chachra says she feels this looking at airport codes or light switches, and she links it (more connections!) to Helen Macdonald’s concept of the “green blur” where in the natural environment you get a “giddying glimpse into the inhuman systems of the world that operate on scales too small and too large and too complex for us to apprehend”. This comparison helped me, and it also made me think of my note-taking app. I realise it’s infrastructural systems that make connection possible, both in real life and in Capacities (my networked note-taking app).

I think each backlink is a tiny peek at the complexity of an infrastructural system working around you. The connections between all our notes are far too complex to hold in our heads, hence why we use apps to externalise things. The backlinks (and unlinked mentions) serve relevant connections to us on a platter without having to think about all other backlinks among all other notes. To me this is akin to turning only my kitchen tap on and not needing to think about how all my other taps will behave, let alone the magic behind the scenes that both delivers fresh water and removes waste water. I simply don’t need to think about it, in the same way I don’t need to think about any other backlinks when reviewing a note, just the ones that are neatly presented there for me. I don’t even have to think about collecting the backlinks, I just have to open a note.

But from all l’ve read around this now, it’s not just the existence of complex systems, but the act of marvelling at their complexity. I thought about that around my note-taking app too. When do I marvel? When do I feel the most? It’s when connections I had totally forgotten about or never even noticed are resurfaced in the backlinks or mentions. Again, the infrastructure of a note-taking app has been working for me to manage that complexity and it’s delivered a gift. Perhaps this is why people like graph view too, it’s a representation of some of the complexity. These are two core parts of a networked note-taking app; they’re what got me hooked on networked note-taking back in the day and now it is my job to help others benefit from it, and I’d like to help people enjoy it too.

In general, I find the concept of offloading complexity to systems very powerful. Infrastructural systems do it on a collective and social basis (power, water, communication networks), but we can do it on a personal level too. For example Capacities gives me a place to put information and to connect it, meaning I don’t need to store it in my head. By freeing up brain space from things I don’t have to do, I can shift to think about things I get to do, like writing posts like this. Thanks to public infrastructure that I never have to think about (unless it goes wrong, another great point from the book), I get to write a post like this with a lamp on in my warm living room because the UK gets dark and cold at 4.30pm in October. Either way, I find it thrilling to see peeks of the complexity visible in our every day but that is managed through systems.

This thinking has set me off on many tangents too (connections!). For example, we talk about tools for thought often, but what about infrastructural systems for thought? It’s much less punchy phrasing but I think there’s something in there. If you’d be interested in reading more about that do let me know and I’ll try to pull a post together. Regardless of where I take my thinking next, I wanted to share the concept of the systemic sublime. I think it’s a great framing for gratitude, be it in Capacities or when I’m stood at my kitchen sink. 🚰

Sources

How Infrastructure Works - Deb Chachra.

You can see the paragraph about green blur from Helen Macdonald here, an excerpt from Vesper Flights

Impact Networks - David Ehrlichman

You can also read about the network mindset shift in Ehrlichman’s Medium article too.

Every cup of coffee is a spectacle of logistics

Note

Personal infrastructure is already a term in use, there’s a popular article by Stephen Wolfram and my favourite is a map of personal infrastructure here. I can’t imagine how long this must have taken. Enjoy the rabbit hole if you’re intrigued by this concept!

Social media has always been a real catalyst of this for me. In fact, everything I ever learned about notes or PKM started on PKM Twitter in 2021, and now I work in the industry, meaning Twitter literally changed my life. So because of how great social media has been for me, I've decided against a blanket removal of it from my life (I tried that briefly and I didn't like it one bit), but I am interested in intentional practices around my social media usage. My practices give me a way forward when I feel overwhelmed with information, or if I feel there is just too much to read, or if I am being heavily influenced by something I had no need for 5 minutes ago.

So what are three practices? Today I'll talk about 3.

1. TikTok Bookmark review

2. Resonance Filter with Raindrop

3. Meta-narratives

All these practices centre around the idea of research as a hobby or a life practice. I’ve found it teaches me as much about the world as it teaches me about myself, and that combination keeps me coming back every day. Crucially, these practices also allow me to do something with the information I've saved or indicated interest in. It moves from passive scrolling to active learning and thinking, but on my own terms through some really fun practices.

Let's explore :)

TikTok Bookmark review

TikTok is far and away my favourite social media. The range of different voices, opinions and ideas I have come across since I downloaded it in the early days of Lockdown is honestly immeasurable. But let's be real, if I'm scrolling TikTok, I'm bored, looking for stimulation or just trying to passively pass the time. Frankly, when I come across these fabulous voices and ideas, I am not in the place to listen to them and act on them, because for me "action" translates to note-taking, so I just bookmark it in TikTok. I have 374 saved right now, and I can’t wait to slowly dig into them.

I do this on evenings and weekends, bit by bit. I browse through to see what’s interesting me at the time, listen, take notes and reflect on what I've heard. I connect it to other notes I have, I go back to TikTok, like the video to say thank you, un-bookmark it, and repeat.

This essentially gives me my own feed where everything is interesting. I spend hours doing this and I love it so much.

Resonance Filter

This is my longest standing practice and it's my favourite. I collect things from all across the internet that interest me, and they sit in my Raindrop Unsorted folder until I’m ready to look into them. I try to go through my bookmarks every weekend.

There's no pressure to clear this 'Unsorted' folder to 0. The point is just to see what resonates when I have my laptop open. Whatever that is goes into Capacities and I work on it. I archive it after (as you can see from the 4200 bookmarks I've archived since 2021). I have a full walkthrough of this on my website.

This practice solves a few issues

1. Not everything I find interesting for a fleeting second needs to go into my note-taking app. I found I was just moving fleeting interests into there rather than taking notes on it, which... is kinda the whole point

2. It's quiet, it's mine. There isn't an algorithm competing for my attention here. There are no ads. It's just me hanging out with whatever past me found interesting.

3. It's unified. I don't have 3000 tabs open, I don't have a million screenshots of things I want to buy/remember and I don't have to read every tweet/comment/article post in depth right as I see it for the first time. It's an inbox of intention, where my intention is to engage with what I read/see on socials, it's how I can develop my own opinions. To do that I first have to capture that interest the second it hits into Raindrop, and then I return to Raindrop in my own time and dig in.

Weave it all into a narrative

The outcomes of the first two practices are more notes in Capacities. One day in March I decided to look at all the notes I created in a week and write about what they meant collectively. Why was I savings what I was saving? What did it mean? What actions did I take as a result?

I enjoyed the process so much, I started doing it weekly, I call them meta-notes. I find it so fun, and incredible to witness my thinking evolve. It's deeply personal and an excellent reflective practice.

The rule is simple, all items collected in a week must be linked in this meta-page. Here's a small snippet of one.

It's really nice to see all the different strands of my interests come together. It's essentially another form of journalling for me, but through the traces of my interests, largely sparked by social media. I love this practice.

Conclusion

I get social media to work for me through intentional consumption, curation and engagement with the things that give me pause. I reflect on everything too, which deepens the intentionality further. Together, I find this is research into the world and myself that feels like a hobby. I stay connected on social media, I broaden my horizons but on my own terms, and process everything in my calm and safe note-taking app. ​I highly recommend it!

If you’ve ever kept a tab open for weeks, intending to read it but never quite getting round to it, or if you’ve taken a screenshot of something to return to later, but then haven’t, then you might benefit from this system too.

I want to be able to save anything that interests me for further thinking, without immediately overwhelming my note-taking app with pdfs or links I’ll simply never read. Believe me, I’ve learned from past mistakes there.

• Any link I want to revisit is sent to Raindrop, a bookmark manager

• I regularly review Raindrop, diving into things that interest me on that day and simply ignoring anything that doesn’t.

• Whatever interests me that day goes into Capacities, my note-taking app. I have one rule: I must add something of my own, be it a note, a tag, or a connection to something else. This means it’s easier to find and connected to what I already have notes on.

I capture into Raindrop daily, and review it whenever I can, but I aim for every weekend given it’s one of my favourite practices.

A resonance filter is therefore both a mindset and a method. The mindset is that anything could matter but not everything will, and the method is that I funnel things into Raindrop rather than straight into a note-taking app. The benefit is that I can save interesting things without clogging up my browser, or worse, just shifting the clutter straight into my notes.

Let’s look at each step in turn.

Resonance

I think resonance comes from paying attention to life. My friend Réka says resonance is a muscle, and I think that’s a perfect metaphor. The more you use it, the more you find it.

I find things that resonate in all the places you’d expect:

• Social media

• Articles (Substack, Medium, Newspapers, Newsletters)

• Arena, Sublime

• Conversations with people

• Random observations when out and about

• Books

• Film, TV and documentaries

I just really try to pay attention. Anything could be interesting or connected to something I already know about. Finding connections is my favourite thing.

When I see something interesting, I simply save a link to it to Raindrop. I used to screenshot it for later, but never go back to it. Now I just get the link and save it to Raindrop.

Raindrop

Raindrop is a bookmark manager. It’s like the save button on instagram posts but for any link, from anywhere. Its web, phone and desktop apps make it so easy to save links from wherever you are. The default save location is the ‘Unsorted’ folder, this is the basis of my Resonance Filter.

The Unsorted folder gets bloated over time but that is entirely the point. Raindrop takes all those interests out of my brain (or browser tabs) and collects it into one place I can refer back to. This is why it’s useful and what makes it such a wonderful place to dive into and explore.

For this system to work long-term though, I found I needed to keep two things in mind:

• There can be no pressure to look in the Unsorted Folder — it’s for fun, it’s not a chore

• There is no Inbox 0 standard to maintain — this is research as a leisure activity, it’s not a day job. Productivity isn’t the measure, joy or interest is.

Most of the time I come across something interesting, I’m not ready to dive into it right away, meaning collection is often a passive activity. Conversely, doing something with it after, is active thinking and needs the right mindset. Some bookmarks stay in the unsorted folder for months. I think that just proves the system works!

The Raindrop Review, my favourite ritual

At the weekends, I sit down and review my Unsorted folder and ask myself the following questions when looking at a bookmark:

So let’s go step by step…

Not interested!

If I’m no longer interested in a bookmark, I move it to a folder I created in Raindrop called ‘Archive’. Eventually all links are archived, not deleted. This means I can search them at any point, I do this a lot, even as far back as 2021!

Interested but not now

But if I am interested in a bookmark, it’s time to decide if I want to dive into it now or not. For example, I want to dive into this post…

It’s a really cool intersection of many of my interests, but right now I’m spending more time reading fiction and taking notes on that. So I’ll leave this post until I’m ready to really dig in and think about it. It’s been in my Unsorted Folder for a month, patiently waiting for its turn. I don’t know when I’ll go back for it, but I know exactly where to go when it’s time.

Interested now!

However, things related to my current interests can be worked on right away, meaning it’s time for Capacities, my note-taking app of choice. But I have a very strict rule: nothing is allowed into Capacities unless I have further comments to add, or at the very least a tag or a link to add. I have to take at least one of those actions in Capacities, otherwise there is no point in moving it out of Raindrop.

For articles and PDFs, sources enter Capacities via Readwise Reader to make sure it really deserves a place in Capacities. Let’s look at this workflow with Reader further.

Articles, PDFs & Readwise Reader (aff link)

Articles and PDFs have always prompted rabbit holes for me, so by actually spending time with the articles, I’m increasing the surface area of potential fun. This is where Readwise Reader comes in, for highlighting. Whilst you can save content straight to Reader, I always go to Raindrop first. I found maintaining two inboxes (Unsorted folder and Reader’s inbox) to be completely unnecessary.

So for me, Reader is simply a reading tool, and an utterly delightful one at that. It’s such a calming place to be. For me, the peak reading experience is a physical book, but Reader is the best digital equivalent, and worth every penny in my opinion.

Highlighting is a thinking tool. What important parts of the text construct an author’s argument? What is interesting or new? What new sources are referenced? What new words have I learned? All of that is highlighted.

If I don’t highlight anything, the piece probably isn’t what I thought it was. I delete it and move on. I know I can always find the original link in Raindrop’s archive.

Once I’ve done my highlighting, I copy the highlights into Capacities. Again, I must add further comments, tags or links. Why was it interesting? Where do I want to see these highlights again? I link to those places, and add those comments. This means there are no source notes in Capacities that are just highlights, my reading is properly integrated with my existing notes or tags.

For large articles and PDFs, I summarise the highlights rather than keeping a giant list of them in Capacities. For example I’ve been reading a book about economics and I certainly don’t want the many, many highlights I needed to make to even understand it. I used the highlights as the basis for my summary, and then kept the summary only. My archive of highlighted sources is in Reader, Capacities holds whatever notes I made from those highlights, connected to other notes in my space.

By sending things that interest me to Capacities, they can be part of my normal note-taking practices. They often spark new rabbit holes or interests and I dive into as many as I can in that research session, but anything leftover goes to — yes you guessed it — Raindrop’s Unsorted folder. I lose no interests, but face no overwhelm from browser tabs or from a full downloads folder!

Conclusion

My Resonance Filter works for two core reasons.

• It’s so easy to maintain- Raindrop is omnipresent, and I use the default folder for easy access

• It’s intentional by design- this really helps me slow down and savour what I’m learning and how I’m learning.

I’ve been doing some form of this practice for 4 years now. Naturally, it evolves with the times and with each app update but each evolution rests on the foundational understanding that anything could be interesting, but not everything needs to show up in my notes app. Capacities is my private, calming place for research. It’s a space I wish to protect, not flood, and Raindrop and Reader are the floodgates.

Disclaimer: I work for Capacities, but this post isn’t part of my job. I really do use it every day.

PS - if you also experience interest overload, this article might help you: https://nesslabs.com/antilibrary

Writing things down and engaging with them has been the quiet antidote to the noise that I didn't realise I needed. There’s no pressure to perform to my notes. I don’t have to think about likes, shares, or views. I get to engage with the world at my own pace, and because of that, I feel more prepared for the world outside.

I find my notes give me a sense of safety. More broadly, my entire note-taking app is a safe space for me to figure out who I am and what I'm interested in. I resonate entirely with this quote:

But what has emerged for me? Since I started consistently using a note-taking app in 2020, I've noted that

• I trust myself more

• I am more confident in my conclusions

• I can think and read critically

• I care less about what others think

I feel like a fundamentally different person in all the best ways, and I've got there in my own time.

Today I want to share some ideas for how you can get started too.

How to get started

first, tune into what resonates

Resonance is your guide. It’s that feeling when something, big or small, makes you pause, think, feel, or question. It could come from a song lyric, a photo, a conversation, a book, a film, even a meme. A pause is a signal, and your job is to catch those signals; it's the beginning of it all.

Here are two key signals to listen for:

1. Anything that genuinely interests you

2. Anything you want to remember, be it a moment, a fact, a feeling, a question

You need a way to capture these signals. That might be Apple Notes, a physical notebook, or a mobile app like Capacities, Sublime or Arena. You’ll find what works for you, but the key is reducing friction so it’s easier to catch the resonance.

My good friend Réka taught me that resonance is a muscle. The more you flex it, the better you get at using it, and we'll learn to act on it.

second, spend time with what you capture

Capturing something is just the start; it's the signal that you have resonated with something. But the real magic happens when you go back and spend time with those things.

So it starts with reviewing what you've saved: Tiktoks, bookmarks, daily notes. You'll want to ignore/delete some things at this point, that's fine! For the things you don't ignore, ask yourself:

• Does this still resonate with me? Why?

• Am I still curious?

• What does this tell me about myself, or what do I want to explore further?

Then tell your note-taking app the answers.

Write why it mattered to you, tag it with themes, link it to related notes, create notes for things you want to explore further. Linking gives you a way to rediscover what you've captured. Unexpected rediscovery is serendipity, and that's one of life's greatest pleasures.

To do this regularly, I recommend building light review rituals. Mine is a Saturday afternoon session where I sit down with my notes, revisit the week, and follow rabbit holes triggered by what I've captured. I don't attempt to review everything, just what resonates that day. It's the best time of the week.

Why does this work?

Because it’s self-inquiry in action. You’re paying attention to what moves you, by returning to it with curiosity and time to listen. Over time, this becomes a quiet but powerful habit: learning who you are by noticing what you’ve noticed and why. These rituals feel like leaving breadcrumbs for my future self. I’m documenting a journey as I go on it.

To be honest, that’s it really: capture and engagement. A simple practice of paying attention to your inner world, sparked by things in your outer one. As you keep showing up, you’ll write more, think more, and ask more questions. It's useful and fun.

Let me show you a few ways I do this.

How I do this in Capacities

quotes

Quotes that resonate get their own note in Capacities. Here are three that speak to me about how "finding yourself' is actually an active process, one that takes time and reflection.

You can see they're tagged as well. I occasionally pick a random tag and review everything tagged with it. I then write about what those things have collectively taught me and my views on it.

For example, opening my agency tag is a way to prompt some introspection on my current approach to agency, which is something I think about a lot when reflecting on my own behaviours and patterns.

At some point in the future, I'll collect my thoughts on agency, based on the items I’ve tagged so far and write my thoughts in a note called 'agency'. I'll reference the inspirational notes/sources as I write. Once I've updated the note, I time-stamp it so I know when I last reviewed them.

Then I repeat: collect, tag, review, learn, update my beliefs. I might only review a tag once or twice a year, but there are always learnings to be had and it’s always really good fun.

tags for evolving views

I have two Very Important Tags™️: #MyLifePhilosophy and #MyPoliticalViews. I'll keep the content of these private, but I collect things that have helped shape my world view or have prompted my beliefs to evolve. I used to think I had to fit into a box, where I fully aligned with one political party or only agreed with one philosopher. The more I read and learned, the less realistic or even necessary this seemed.

What I deem more important now is that my beliefs are mine, and that I engage critically with them. Your beliefs should evolve as you learn more and gain more experience and Capacities is where this thinking and evolution lives.

Sometimes, the things I tag don't make perfect sense to me yet but the tag is a signal to look deeper, and my research takes place in Capacities anyway, so it's in the right place. I saw a great line from Roam Research about note-taking apps: "It’s not just for storing what you know but it’s for exploring what you don’t". I agree entirely.

So a couple of times a year I dig into the tags, and update the pages I have for my life philosophy and my political views. This is where engagement with the difficult questions and challenges live.

These tags have especially helped me develop my knowledge and understanding of the world, and as a result I feel better equipped to show up in the world. I am more understanding but also more able to listen and learn. It's great to witness the evolution and to see the work and the inspiration behind the evolution. It's the traces of my journey, and I love to capture traces.

media

I also take notes on media I consume in which something resonated. Quotes are the most common thing to capture, or questions sparked. But in the case of Bridget Jones, I just loved one of her outfits, so initially made the note just for that.

I don't take in depth notes as a standard, because that's not a standard that I can maintain, nor should it be one I reach for. Resonance represents a spark in a moment, and I promise myself that I'll listen to it, it's not about launching into essays about everything. That's one way to dull sparks over time. There's no standard for note-taking, and I think the perception that there is puts people off.

beautiful randomness

Because resonance can come from anywhere, there's a range of fun and random things that I capture. For this I text my Capacities daily note via Whatsapp. Sometimes I write profound things that pleasantly surprise me, other times it's about a potato... I'll pick it up in my review nonetheless.

regular reflection

Reflection is a life practice and it is bigger than just what I do in Capacities, but Capacities plays an integral role. I do structured daily, weekly and monthly reviews in Capacities (see LifeOS) and then I expand on the nitty gritty in Day One which is where my journals are because the 'on this day' feature is a light in my life.

These reviews are where my narrative on the habits/media I'm consuming and the actions I'm taking intersect. What's working for me (good decisions) and what isn't (bad decisions)? What stands out from the week? What am I thinking about?

I feel it takes the engagement with what I capture that bit further. What I learn from reviews is fed into my weekly/monthly intentions. It's always in motion, always time for learning and experimentation. And seriously all of this stemmed from capturing what resonates with me and expanding on it.

Summing it all up

We are consistently reminded that the world is messy, scary and difficult. I cannot overstate the value of having a safe space for you to get lost in and to make sense of the mess, and learn about yourself along the way. I saw a Tweet (and saved it to review later 🫡) about it being your fourth place. I like that. If you start this practice, I hope you like it too.

What’s resonated with you lately? And where are you engaging with it?

I got so excited about note-taking that I started writing about it in 2023. That lead to a job with Capacities the same year! This article is not part of my work with them. The practice is tool-agnostic.