I have a fix for your systems

Oh, hi friends!

Have you ever tried to piggyback off systems that you’re already used to?

I thought of this because we recently switched to using Airtable at the MONEY office.

Airtable is (apparently) a “spreadsheet-database cloud-based app.” 

Basically it’s like Excel but actually functional for people who like words more than numbers. (I hate Excel. GO BACK TO 1995, EXCEL.)

There are categories and checkmarks and due dates. It made our editorial calendar neat and functional, so I thought…why don’t I use it for my creative-project life?

So I created a new workspace of my own and suddenly, listing all the musicals I want to write and untitled “maybe plays” and first drafts and fourth drafts in a neat and functional space made them more, I don’t know, real?

This is part of my desire to treat my creative life as less of an abstracted fountain of stuff that just happens and more as a methodical…business isn’t the right word, but you get what I mean. Order isn’t a bad thing.

So what systems or processes work in one part of your life that you might be able to adopt to another?

Ice cream always make me so happy. This is a universal feeling, yes?

My friends Jenn and Randy are ice cream geniuses. They whip up their own creative scoops using ingredients from farmers’ markets (like this Blueberry Swirl). You can follow them on Instagram @cobblerhillicecream. Let temptation reign.

“A great piece of work is a chapter or a moment in your life. If you go past that and into the next moment of your life, the music is going to change.

There is something about keeping the chapters coming because, if you wait too long, you’re just going to be missing chapters. It’s not that now you’re finally making the great thing that you started eight years before; you’re probably just making the eighth year’s chapter at that point.

There is something about keeping some sort of a flow and working as hard as you can to make the best stuff you can, and if the material is not there, go back and write more.

There is something about there being another chapter and saying, ‘This is where I am now. And this is where I am tomorrow. And this is where I am next time.’”

Love this advice from music producer Rick Rubin, in this great article about his creative process.

Finishing the week with a volley and a trick shot. GO GET IT.

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Thanks, as always, for reading.

Love, Kara