How I Finally Stopped Losing My Best Ideas (A Simple Daily Journaling System)
For years, my ideas were everywhere—scattered across notebooks, random apps, voice memos, napkins. I'd have a breakthrough insight, write it down, and then never see it again. And it'd just get worse or bloated, the more content I consumed, the harder it was to actually apply what I had learned. Sound familiar? The problem wasn't that I wasn't trying to capture the ideas. The problem was I had no structure. So my journaling became simpler and simpler until I landed on something that actually works. The Framework: Three Levels, One Question Here's how I structure the system: AREAS → Quests → Projects Every morning, I ask one question for each "box" accross each level: "Are we moving toward the goal?" Not "Have we hit it?" but "Are we on track?". This yes/no check is everything. It removes ambiguity and forces clarity. There is no middle statuses. "Oh we're kinda at risk, or its up next, or we're going to work on it". No are we going to hit the target on time. Areas: How You Slice Your World Areas are MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) categories. For work, I use the Go To Market data model aligned to the customer journey. For life, I use the wellness-resource wheel. For family, I scale that same wheel per person. The key: Areas chain together in order of the customer journey. This lets me jump into the right context instantly when I need to capture an idea. Think of it like theres the "marketing area", but it can hold different departments as specific main system processes like Content, Ads, DM outreach, email outreach etc. And they all flow to capture and create value. We group this under a 1YR target all unified under the step of the data model. E.g. marketings job is to push views, clicks and opt ins to the next step, and so on. So when you have an idea, because the entire Model is mapped to a straight line aka the shape of the factory, you can link "up" to the space if its general... but what if you can put it under a specific department.