New Interview: How Digital Organization Relates to Putting Yourself First
Andrea Hylen is one of my favorite podcast hosts! We had a lot of fun diving into this:
Something that really surprised me about organizing my notes and ideas is what I ended up getting out of it on a personal level.
That’s how I learned that organizing your notes is really putting your mask on first.
We don’t have a wide discussion going on about this yet in the self care community, in coaching, in the spiritual community, or even in the small business community but we really need to.
We need to linger on how digital organization for your notes and ideas is essential self care.
Why? Because it’s a conversation with the most important person in your life:
Yourself.
I talk about this essential conversation and what that means for your life and your writing with Andrea Hylen.
This post is about the fact that the more information you save, the harder it is to find anything. Here’s my journey with this and how I’ve overcome it.
Pursuing goals doesn’t always bring me comfort anymore.
So why do anything?
Including send emails or write posts for you?
Well let’s talk about what my motivation is not:
It’s not making people like me.
It’s not making a million.
It’s not being famous and successful.
It’s not making my (now deceased) dad proud. [cry]
It can’t be those because
all of those have backfired,
all of them have negative consequences, and
all of them are semi-fruitless because
all of them are outside of my control…
So what the hell is a good source of motivation?
Being my own best friend?
I’ve been gung ho about it for over a year.
It’s a good mission.
BUT this isn’t motivating me right now,
because I feel really crap / blah at the moment, and
my inner best friend energy is NOT flowing, I’ll be real.
Like I’m ok, I’m fine, but I’m not okay like a lot okay.
I’m not thriving.
Not in this exact moment.
Sometimes that juicy feeling just isn’t there.
I’ll be my friend enough to say: it’s not my fault, it just is how it is.
Ok so what about “If it helps one person, it’s worth it”?
This is a pretty good mission for anyone with a desire to help others, to get your business out, write that thing, etc.
But although it’s more achievable than saving the world, helping one person is not something I can control.
And that’s really frustrating to me.
I have to fight against all the other stuff pulling on people’s attention and algorithms are really frustrating.
I can’t control if anyone sees anything I write or create.
Thus how can I make sure I help them?
So no, I’m not motivated by, “If it helps one person…”
As much as I love giving people something valuable in these posts, and not wasting your time,
right now writing to help someone feels like a really suffocating rationale.
Thinkin that way, I find myself racking my mind for something good enough to say,
to justify the 2 cents worth of attention this post may get…
Despite years of churning things out, and about 20 million ideas.
I just don’t have the bandwidth to piece them together into a work of art right now.
So I’ll be honest what is ringing true:
It’s worth it to send this email if writing it helps ME.
Yes ME.
I can be that one person that it helps.
I have often found the writing process to be soothing and comforting and lovely.
If it helps me then I can better control than whatever other people do.
Plus if it helps me it is likely it will also help another person. Just like the lovely Cheryl on Linkedin said about my ungoaling article…
THIS IS RETURNING TO MY ROOTS.
Writing at its roots for me is about healing.
It’s about love,
it’s about beauty and
calm and peace and
getting out of a spiral of victimhood after being dealt bad cards.
I have been dealt some shitty cards in my life, some cards other people didn’t have to hold
but I’ve also gotten some good ones, flipped some around and swapped them and gotten a better set.
I write A LOT of things that no one else sees about those specific cards because
–to be honest
–some things I can’t talk to most other people about without feeling woefully misunderstood.
But you know what?
You don’t have to hold the same cards as me to get what I am saying there
over my life, I have come to see that being misunderstood is itself a very common human experience.
Writing has been an outlet for me to hold myself on the page where I am.
And sometimes I like to share my words with other people just to declare:
ITS OK FOR ME TO BE HERE.
Sometimes I feel depressed or anxious or blah.
If you’re looking for someone to be “done healing” go elsewhere.
I will never be done healing, I’ve been through too much and my feelings are covered by an onion skin in a rough world. But I think there is value in honesty,
in not waiting for you to be emotionally feeling perfect before you can have a voice or feel a sense of progress or say
“It’s not enough but it is enough, actually, because I am ok with it.
And I’m choosing not to see everything as totally sucking forever even if it sort of does suck a lot…forever.
I can make my own meaning on top of that suck.”
That’s what writing helps me to do.
That’s coming back to my roots.
Coming back to my roots is such a good thing to do when I am lost or out of sorts.
Something else I do to stay close to what matters:
I keep notes on my Values and Priorities over time.
When they pop up in my journal entries or writing,
I mark the digital entry with a link to a page on those topics.
Then every so often I sit and go through all the entries I linked, compiling the lessons.
I think I’ll do that next…
That sounds nourishing to review what really matters to me 🙂
If you would like to go spelunking in your thoughts,
it’ll be something I talk about in the upcoming Digital Organization Membership.
Plus: I talk about this sort of process in the posts below on:
We break down the step-by-step process to update your bio so it’s relevant, current, and spicy.
I decided to do this because I acquired a second business and the bio page of that site needs a refresh.
Every bio or website needs a refresh every year or so…
want to join me?
With a refresh, you’ll feel good about your website or bio and stop feeling blah,
Afterwards you’ll feel excited to share your bio and website so you can receive fans, followers or clients and feel the love. <3
Key points of the 60-90 minute class:
🌶 my unique step-by-step process to update your website bio so it hooks the people who need you and they shower you with love. 🌶 why the goal of a bio is not about looking perfect but something much simpler yet effective. 🌶 a behind the scenes: what parts of my website bio I think are strong versus weak/embarrassing/outdated. (Can you relate?)
🌶 what things matter the most to change asap and why so you can prioritize your changes.
What you’ll get when you sign up:
Replay from 2024
Update your bio step by step with us! Includes Video and Audio replays plus written transcript.
Replay from 2023 Use the recording of our Bio Refresh party in 2023 to start working right away if you want.
It’s delivered immediately on sign up.
Coaches, writers, or small business owners who want a personal connection to their audience or potential clients probably need this!
(Use your bio to create authentic connections so people will buy your book, class or service.)
If your website feels funky and you’re not motivated to update it, this class is for you!
Not only will you learn my system but
WE WILL WORK ON OUR BIOS TOGETHER!
By the end of the class, even if you are not totally done updating the whole page,
you’ll have at least made progress and gotten inspired.
Ready to refresh your website and feel confident about sharing it to attract more fans, followers, or clients?
Register for the Website Bio Refresh Party now
for only $27!
The bio is the most important page on your website because it’s where people click most often!
I was combing through things in storage and was under a deadline.
Do you have a mountain of things in storage?
What about in your mind?
What about on your todo list?
Notebooks and documents spilling everywhere?
When you face a mountain of things you need to deal with, what do you do?
I tend to get overwhelmed easily and go into fight or flight.
It’s times like those where I need to breathe, maybe take a break or a walk.
It’s good to get grounded but it’s only the first step.
The next step is to COME BACK.
Always come back later to chip away some more…
Well except for if you decide to quit–
And that can be okay, too.
Maybe instead of sorting the documents you decide they are ten years old and useless and you should shred or recycle them.
Maybe instead of finishing that cross-stitch project, you decide to throw it in the trash.
Quitting and Giving up are things that have a bad rap.
But they can be incredibly useful tools in the right circumstances!
When I’m overwhelmed, I find it helpful to ask myself
if it’s time to quit something, or at least postpone.
Because the weight of expectations I put on myself
to do ALL THE THINGS
can be heavier than 10 boxes loaded with junk in my storage.
And that brings me to an article I published recently on this topic!
Ungoaling:
Not Hanging on Too Hard to Your Goals
Once upon a time, there was a little girl. As young as eleven, she was speeding through life at top speed, intent to check every box, achieve every goal, and reach the finish line of success.
Until the day came, when she looked up, and thought, “Maybe there is no finish line, maybe that’s made up.”
She saw all the time that had passed, all the effort she’d expended. And for what? She could have just spent more time daydreaming and staring at the ceiling and maybe she would have felt happier that way.
From then on, she didn’t feel particularly motivated to try and set so many goals anymore…And the beautiful thing is, she let that be ok.
That little girl was me and, ‘ungoaling’ is a name I made up for the process of detaching and releasing the need to cling to all of my goals.
In the 36 years of my life, I’ve set many goals and pursued them wholeheartedly. I’ve worked to check each off of my list with single-minded focus and intensity. But achieving those goals never felt as satisfying as I thought it was going to be.
In the last few years there’s something I’ve begun to think deeply about:
If you’re searching for treasure, it’s not just about digging a deep hole, really fast. First, make sure that you’re digging in the right spot.
I’m riding high because my second business, which I acquired in January, has celebrated a big milestone.
Background: My grandfather started a business 50 years ago, a magazine about banjos, it passed to my dad and now it’s mine.
After a LOT of work behind the scenes, I finally was able to announce that the business is open (and not closing, which almost happened). A lot of people are celebrating and supporting.
So HERE’S to celebrating when you hit a big milestone.
Feel free to reply and tell me something you are celebrating!
And as much as I love that, I also really want to talk about:
Notes, journals, the genius that they contain and the PARADOX
Paradox
“…a paradox that a lot of people experience as they take notes: the more notes they gather, the more the volume of information grows, the more time and effort it takes to review it all, and the less time they have to do so. Paradoxically, the more notes they collect, the less discoverable they become!”
– Tiago Forte, Building a Second Brain
AHH I don’t know how you feel about this but it drives me crazy.
I love knowledge. I love information. I love paper.
Back to school shopping. Those memories of filling a cart up with notebooks with my dad at the office supply store will always be a treasure.
Over time I filled countless notebooks, but did I reread them? Not sure…
Did I get the most out of what I learned? Out of my journals, my todo lists?
Nope. Can’t say I did…
Because the more I wrote, the less I found.
And the less I found, the more I knew things were falling between my fingers,
the more I wanted to write down every thought in the hopes it would help me remember it more…
Thus a circling problem.
LOL the hilarity of it and the tragedy…
So how do I find things when I want them?
It’s a big problem.
I’ve come at this problem a number of ways over the last few years.
I’ve tried different planners…
But I really got serious about getting organized when I decided to change my entire life and move to Japan.
There was so much to do in applying for jobs in Japan and preparing to go, that I got a coach who taught me a productivity and organization system.
It definitely helped…enough.
It worked just enough to help me do everything I needed to do
before getting on a plane to Japan with suitcases in hand.
What was that system I used in 2018?
Basically I used a giant excel sheet organized by project area, that broke it all down by timeline.
It was okay. I got things done!
That WAS a milestone to celebrate…
But a friend of mine saw it and was like aghast at how much I was shoving in this excel sheet lol.
It made her cross eyed.
Honestly, me, too.
And the essentials to prep for Japan were complete but I still had a lot unfinished.
I got everything I needed to do done, but not everything I wanted to do.
But in 2019, I had some free time.
I had finally made it to Japan and prepared to dig in for some creative activity.
Ready to do more of what I want to do…
Now I got some things done using my old system,
but during my Japan Year in 2019-2020, I noticed a few things…
First, in Japan, I no longer had my library of old journals, or notebooks to refer back to:
No access to any of that insight.
AND there had to be good stuff in there.
But I didn’t even see that as a big problem
because I had a bigger problem:
Despite the lack of distractions….
I didn’t even feel like I was making the most out of the insights from the 1-2 journals I could carry with me or the documents on my computer.
So forget the 20 journals back in my dad’s attic (cries).
I had organized myself more than ever, and it was just not enough.
However, I did reach one pinnacle:
I was more aware than ever of how much I still needed to improve my system
for finding and organizing my writing and ideas so I could do something with them.
How many ideas I had done nothing with, how many things had fallen in the cracks for years!
At that point, I didn’t have much confidence I could fix this.
I was more organized than ever, but still…
I was copying and pasting some of the same ideas in my excel sheet productivity system….
week after week
At the end of each week I still had done nothing with many ideas, so I copied it to the next week
and a lot never really went anywhere.
Some did.
But the excel sheet didn’t do everything for me, and my ideas were trapped into documents or journals.
Some things just didn’t fit into the system of an excel sheet at all…
It was very much in my space, the things that didn’t work with the system:
-my multi-passionate nature and all the slow burn projects,
-insights from my journals, Tarot Readings or meditations
-business musings from old trainings or things that are 5 steps ahead of where I am now,
-fuzzy and unformed ideas, still brewing.
I could handle my todo list for big, urgent problems and a finite number of projects with clear tasks.
But I am such an octopus with 8 things at once.
That system just could not handle my brain and the zillions of ideas I come up with.
It didn’t fit me. Not ALL of me.
It wasn’t enough, I needed more.
Well, I eventually tried a few other systems.
I upgraded the excel sheet to Notion, which made it easy to tuck things out of sight if they were not a priority.
No more going cross eyed looking at the big list
AND I had more space to expound on projects or tasks if needed,
without it distracting me when I don’t need to see it.
I made a bunch of templates and trainings on this Notion system that I share with my students now.
But that’s still for organizing projects and tasks.
What about all the other stuff?
The thing I really love for organizing all the other stuff – is a free app called Obsidian.
I have a whole system of how I use it,
And I feel like I make sense to me now.
For the last two years I have experimented with it to develop a whole new system to fill the gap
so I can work on more things that I want to do versus need to do.
I’ve used it as a hub to archive all my writing from journals, tarot readings, business classes, articles, and so much more.
And it’s changed my life.
It connects ideas in a new way instead of being scattered everywhere in a place I never see.
So if you feel like there is no hope for you, please keep an open mind!
Maybe there is something out there.
Now to address the Paradox
As a final thought, I want to pull forward:
another quote of Tiago Forte that truly represents what I’ve learned from this whole journey to get organized:
“Instead of consuming ever-greater amounts of content, we could take on a more patient, thoughtful approach that
favors rereading, reformulating, and working through the implications of ideas over time.
Not only could this lead to more civil discussions about the important topics of the day; it could also preserve our mental health and heal our splintered attention.”
I’ve shifted my life into spending more time looking back:
looking back at my notes and the insights and lessons I have already learned.
Because there’s a difference between having a great idea or a goal, and
actually bringing it into knowledge.
That takes repetition and reviewing and implementation and tweaking
so it becomes a part of my bones.
So deep that I no longer NEED a reminder.
That takes time. That takes patience.
That takes removing the foot from the gas on purely generating new words so fast I never look back.
I’ve generated a lot of words.
A LOT.
Now I’m slowing down, reviewing things, making new connections between my ideas, and I have never felt smarter and more at ease.
My mental health is improved by:
– The satisfaction of synthesizing: building on my ideas into something better makes me feel like a genius.
– Never starting from scratch: any time I write an article I already have it half written from all my great ideas from the past.
– Better quality work: feeling proud, sharing it with more people and reusing or referencing my work over time
– More energy: I use less energy to remember or find things so I have more to work with
– More confidence: since I feel more genius now and because I really know when something is important to me and has come up in my notes 20+ times
– Sense of peace: everything is ok, it’s written down somewhere and I know I’ll find it
My mind is more decluttered and it’s safe to have it stay empty and open.
I stand my ground more because I know what’s really important to me.
I value my ideas and I take myself seriously.
I feel empowered. I am learning and growing in all the right ways.
I know my system may not be the everything for everyone, but it’s just too good for me NOT to share.
So I’ll be sharing both my updated and improve productivity system for projects in Notion
AND
My system for all the other writing and ideas I have.
I have an amazing wikipedia-like system to organize all my zillions of ideas, journals, and thoughts into coherence and genius.
And you are welcome to learn both systems and practice customizing them to suit your own needs.
That will be the focus of the upcoming Digital Organization Membership, which will be starting in June.
If you want to get 50% off the price, make sure to keep an eye out next month when the doors open.
Early birds get 50% off the price:
===> $30 total for 3 months of membership
But the sale is only available for the first week it opens…
I am pondering doing a free 21 day heartfelt writing challenge sometime in the summer.
Not sure when though. But it won’t be April. I kept thinking I’d do it the last few months but it’s just been too crazy. So we will see when I have the mental space.
This fall I’m planning to run a 6 week writing intensive for business owners.
We will enter a deep conversation with the soul of your business so you know what to write next for your book or biz content. I’ll lead you through writing exercises to make your business writing more powerful and of service. Plus you can get feedback on your writing if you want, too.
What else is going on?
I’ve been slowing down on writing for different websites–
although I’ll always try to show up for this weekly FunLetter, I have been slowing down sites like Medium and Linkedin. Just catching my breath lately.
I am also starting to play music again and upload music clips to my patreon.
I set up a keyboard in my living room!
I see it every day so it makes me want to play and sing.
I also took on a part time gig supporting virtual events that occur throughout the year.
That helps me out financially as the other business I got in January is taking my time and attention but not paying money right now. My second biz is also stealing time and focus away from marketing my Sofia Wren writing business, so that’s a double hit.
This new gig will help balance things.
I can take my time with the new biz, run my most exciting Sofia Wren programs, and it’s all good!
No matter what bills are getting paid.
SIDEBAR
There’s so much shame that some people feel picking up part time work as a business owner,
people feel like it makes them less professional or good at their job somehow,
but as a seasoned 10 year business owner, I can tell you that is BS.
Working a business is liberating but also hard and don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.
There are pros to showing up and getting a check.
Sometimes doing a little bit of both freelancing and working for someone else is a great way to get the best of both worlds.
But that’s just my opinion.
Ok ya’ll I’ll feeling kindof fuzzy headed today
so I’m going to encourage you again to check out any recent emails you didn’t get a chance to read:
One of the things I keep coming back to is my morning routine,
it’s always a good place to start when I’m feeling off.
And lately it’s even begun to inspire me to write other times of the day as well.
As a result, I’m starting to feel like my old self again!
Plus I’ve had some big aha moments…
Morning Routines
Here’s the morning routine that has helped me bounce back from burnout and overwhelm.
Plus it’s inspired me to write more.
Note: I might not do this all in one day…
Try not to touch my phone. If I do, it’s only for listening to some music to get up and moving. But I avoid social media, communication, and anything that will create noise in my brain.
Spiritual Time. I listen to guided goddess meditations by my friend Kris Seraphine Oster. I also love to pull Tarot Cards.
Exercise. I like to dance or do physical therapy exercises for my right hip and wrist.
Tapping / EFT. Whether I have two minutes or 20, I tap to get calm, grounded, and focused on long term goals.
Writing in my notebook or in my digital journal. I’ll explain this one in depth below.
The Writing Practice
I want to go deeper into my writing practice specifically and what a day might look like,
since I combine writing by hand and a digital journal in a way I don’t see very often.
Playing with my digital journal lately has become my FAVORITE piece of my ritual.
Yesterday, I didn’t get that writing time, and I found myself craving it later in the day.
Like filling out a puzzle, something just felt missing.
Craving aha moments,
things fitting together into a bigger picture.
Knowing where things belong and thus where I belong.
I’ve gotten so many big aha moments over the last few weeks doing this practice,
plus repeating it has helped me review and remember those insights.
I cannot handle the thought of a juicy idea falling in the cracks!
I feel safer knowing that my big ideas aren’t just going to go poof, and are
deeply embedded in my system so they actually change how I live and the results I experience.
This is helping me do it all.
Example of a day playing in my digital journal.
I didn’t get a chance to write in the morning yesterday
but I craved it so much I sat down to do it in the evening.
I followed my same process…
Just FYI for the last two years I have been keeping a digital journal.
I don’t always start by writing directly into a computer document.
I like the way a pen feels in my hands as I write, so often I write on paper.
But if I leave it in a journal I won’t use my ideas so I have to get them into my digital journal.
To do that, I might summarize my main ideas and type them, or
I’ll transcribe them by reading them out loud into an app.
Lately, I have been tired so I’m taking it easy.
I just add to my notes a little whatever it’s relevant
and mostly just look at old notes I already have there.
old notes, diary entries, ideas…
Whether I wrote an entry yesterday, a month ago, or two years ago,
there are a lot of cool things to rediscover that I enjoy reading.
There has always been something fulfilling about reviewing my old notes and journals.
But now I use a special program to organize and find things more easily than
Microsoft Word, Google Docs or Scrivener.
My current process also creates additional connections between documents and ideas each time I review them.
This repetition helps me to remember, learn, and develop even more ideas.
To start, often a general theme calls to me.
Sometimes I get this from tapping, a tarot card reading or a dream.
That’s where I start exploring…
I go off from there,
reading,
making connections,
writing new notes, and
just generally having fun.
Yesterday I was thinking about the word “patience.”
Patience is a theme that has been important to me over the last several years especially.
Since 2022, I noted it as an important 28 times across the 3,000 digital notes I’ve created.
A clip of the directory of my “Patience” notes
Note: this isn’t a general search for the word ‘patience’,
these are notes I intentionally marked with this theme over the years.
The best thing about the free program I use to digitally organize all these notes is that
I can easily find and click through to the relevant sentences about Patience in each entry.
It doesn’t take me very long to read through everything I have written about patience,
about 20-30 minutes of finding old gems and ideas on the topic.
I revisit notes from 2022 when I began to see having patience with myself as self-respect.
That really changed my life because it made me realize how important it is to stick to.
I came across many other interesting thoughts and quotes and copied anything that felt extra-relevant to ponder later.
Here’s a quote that doesn’t mention the word ‘patience,’ but feels connected anyway:
“Regard yourself as a cloud, in the flesh, because you see, clouds never make mistakes. Did you ever see a cloud that was misshapen? Did you ever see a badly designed wave? No, they always do the right thing. But, if you will, treat yourself for a while as a cloud or a wave and realize that you can’t make a mistake whatever you do. Because even if you do something that appears totally disastrous, it will all come out in the wash somehow or another. Then through this capacity you will develop a kind of confidence. And through confidence you will be able to trust your own intuition.”
Alan Watts
Eventually clicking through my notes, and poking around to whatever catches my attention,
I look at my goals for the year 2023.
Patience was a goal for that year, which is why I ended up there…
New Years of 2023, I made a huge mindmap of different documents, themes, intentions and ideas
(see pic below).
Here’s a zoomed out version of that mindmap —
if I want to reach the words in each square, I zoom in or click into it for a closer view.
I felt impressed that I did this in January 2023,
but also aware that I never did a mindmap like this in 2024.
My next thought was:
Did I set intentions for 2024 at all?
I went poking around to see if I had any notes on that…
I quickly found a review of 2023 I wrote in January 2024, and skimmed through it.
I went down the rabbit hole a bit looking at things like that…
After 20 minutes or 30 minutes reading seasonal reviews and big-picture notes,
thinking about my goals and intentions…
I wrote down what I noticed had changed from a year ago,
what I had done,
what I was still working on, and
what was still to do.
And this felt very good.
Necessary.
Right.
Organized.
The Pay Off
Ultimately something became very, very clear.
As I processed all of this,
my thoughts returned back to patience and
what it meant for me now.
I didn’t do it on purpose, it just naturally happened.
And my big aha moment of the day:
Patience relates to the things that have made me feel burned out.
Since January 2024, I’ve had a lot on my plate.
With my business, my nonprofit work, my life, and
now an additional business that I recently acquired…
Since the beginning of the year, deadlines created a lot of urgency and pressure on me.
In a situation that feels urgent, patience with myself can easily go out the window
but that’s no excuse for self disrespect.
I have to set boundaries to protect my mental health.
I decided to put more emphasis on TAKING MY TIME for the rest of 2024.
For a while now, I’ve been trying to take a slow and steady mindset, because it’s more sustainable.
But I needed to recommit to it.
Why?
I forgot I cared so much about it.
Taking time is more enjoyable for me.
It also tends to be easier for my nervous system, while urgency is bad:
it triggers anxiety, depressed feelings and flashbacks to bad times in my life.
Not to mention burnout and overwhelm.
My mental health suffers under a lot of time crunch.
While I might not be able to control every deadline, there are things I can control, and
I am making a commitment to myself to slow down.
And I think it’s going to make the rest of my year a LOT better.
And if I get into these habits, it could make my whole life better, as well.
So there you go.
After a little more than an hour of playing with my notes on Tuesday night while my husband was playing a video game…
a process that was totally enjoyable and satisfying for me,
almost like a game for me, too…
One little word, ‘patience,’ led me to recommit to myself in a life changing way.
I wanted to share it in case it inspired you to revisit your routines, practices and even,
play with your own notes or writing!
Doing this has been super fulfilling and nourishing for my soul.
Any writing you have, journal entries, old transcripts of you talking, ideas:
There is gold in there.
Don’t forget the power of reviewing things.
it can be fun!
While not all of my deep dives take this long–
some times I just spend a few minutes on it…
Playing with my digital journal has been a really beautiful and nourishing self-care practice for me lately,
That’s why I’m excited to share more about my process in my upcoming digital organization membership.
I’ll be sharing how to organize your ideas
across different notebooks, time periods, or documents,
around different themes, topics, intentions or reviews.
And we will have time to practice together,
so you can put your own spin on it,
and get your questions answered.
Does that sound like fun to you?
Join the waitlist for the Digital Organization Membership
