What I did for a lot of early 2026 was even worse: On the advice of the tacticians, I built the structure around the business before the business had anything to sell. It's like I was trying to build this really elegant storefront, before I had a clear idea of the inventory that would go within it. The shelves turned out to be all askew, metaphorically.

Activating a new phone and transferring all the things over.

A little amplifier on point #3: Back when I was coaching writers, I came up with a concept I called the zero draft. A first draft is for when you know what you want to say. A zero draft is for when you know you want to say something, but you aren't sure exactly what it is. What most of us do in that case is ... think. And we just keep thinking. A zero draft is designed to get us acting. There's one rule to a zero draft: "You can't do it wrong." Literally write ANYTHING. It can look like this at the start: "I want to write a piece about how to most effectively select the AI tools in your toolkit, but I actually don't know what to say. So far, if I'm honest, my own choosing has been kind of haphazard. How can I offer anything valuable if that's true? HELP! Maybe this is garbage." Etc. Here's the thing: KEEP GOING. What you're doing is engaging a completely different set of neuronal pathways than simply thinking about the problem. The act of typing (or handwriting, or dictating, or filming yourself) gets you MOVING, and moving will move you SOMEWHERE, whereas just thinking tends to keep us in the same place. In my experience, if I just keep moving my fingers long enough (I mostly zero-draft by typing), I will eventually figure out what it is I want to say. It'll just show up. Continuing with the example I started above, I might finish the zd with: "You know, the truth is, there are so many tools out there, I make these kind of snap decisions about which ones I like, and those are the tools I use. Actually, that's a pretty good rubric for choosing: if you're going to use a tool, use one that you enjoy using." Bang: now I have a thesis for a first draft.

I like that basically everyone here said Notion. I went to Notion's website again and, yep, I still don't get it. Glad you're creating a module in the classroom, @Manda Jackson . I look forward to checking it out. Maybe @Dinka Salvador will give us a two-minute tutorial someday.

@Manda Jackson What's stopping you from posting them? Your answer need not be rational. Mine isn't. Here's what's stopping me from watching all that footage: It'll take so long to watch it! There are so many hours of it! I have no idea at all what's in most of it! Now, those answers may lead to a follow-up question: "Benjamin, if you aren't going to watch it ... why do you keep shooting more of it?"

@Manda Jackson See, that makes perfect sense. That's not irrational at all. We have to prioritize. Whereas what I'm doing ... I either need to review that footage, or stop shooting.