The Sep. 1st, 2023 episode of Hard Fork had some interesting stuff in it related to note taking and personal productivity software.

Casey is ultra organized and uses fancy new software at every opportunity. Kevin is ultra unorganized where his whole note taking system is saving untitled drafts in email.

That’s about as far away as you can get.

But if anyone is hoping for a career in tech or journalism, you could easily be looking up to one or both of them because they are both pretty darn successful in their own rights.

Using email as a note taking app isn’t wholy unoffensive to me (as long as you title them and send them to yourself!), but you could probably do better.

Casey had a good point: it doesn’t matter what your system is as long as it’s working for you. It’s when you see someone’s janky ass system and it isn’t working for them, there’s trouble and you want to save them from themselves.

That’s how I feel about email. Like who cares if someone looks at your inbox and declares it a disaster… if it is working for you. The problem is when it looks like a disaster, and is one, because you aren’t being effective with the world’s best communication tool.