Organizing your creative work
and how AI can help
What is work?
Stay with me. I’m not on any substances, I promise.
I think at it’s core, work is very simple.
Work is transforming unstructured inputs like meetings, conversations, design briefs, sketches, and other random pieces of information into a structured output like a design CAD file or a presentation.
The more efficiently you can make this transformation, the more “productive” you are.
There are generally two unavoidable inefficiencies in the process of work that have been present since the dawn of human thought:
Communication
Organization.
You cannot avoid these things, you can only minimize the degree to which they slow you down.
Communication is exchanging information with others. Most of us experience this on a day-to-day level through meetings, emails, Slack messages, and such. There’s a limited amount you can do about this if you work in a modern organization, and this piece is not about that.
Organization is how you manipulate the information you have and coordinate its use in order to produce your structured output. It is how you file your notes away for later review, whether in a notebook or in a digital note-taking app. It’s how you scan your sketches and put them into folders. It’s how you collect and synthesize user research into digestible and actionable input.
I’ve long had a fascination with the organization of work. Especially in how I manage my own work, and especially design work because it involves such a varied range of tangible and intangible materials. It is a user-experience design problem with a user base of one: me.
Since becoming a professional designer over a decade ago, I have embraced the idea that a system of organization is what allows you to be creative and productive. Having a strong system and sticking to it means that you can focus on creating, rather than just moving stuff around.
Over the years, this idea has led me down a rabbit hole of books, YouTube productivity gurus, productivity apps, and personal knowledge management. I was always searching for the holy grail: a system that would reduce time spent organizing my work and increase time creating.
I’ve been tinkering with my personal systems for over a decade at this point. There were times I felt I was close to achieving that holy grail. And I’ve certainly learned a ton about the ways I work best and what tools are actually useful to me.
But there was always one problem.
The maintenance and upkeep of the system would eclipse any efficiency gains and I would eventually fall off the wagon because it was a slog to keep up with over the long-term.
It felt like I was on an endless cycle that kind of went like this:
Every time I went through this cycle, I learned some things and I did get more efficient at how I worked, but in many ways it felt like going back to square one and trying to figure out how to organize the mountain of information inputs that modern work (and just life in general) requires all over again.
Currently, I have a digital productivity system that kind of works centered around Notion, but despite all the beautiful ✨a e s t h e t i c✨ Notion setups you see all over the internet and how so many YouTube gurus have claimed that Notion changed their life, I’m starting to feel that maybe this isn’t quite it. There is still far too much upkeep required. Additionally, Notion, for all it’s charms, is such a huge open sandbox that it can feel overwhelming and unfocused.
It’s nearing the end of 2023, and generally around this time each year I start to look closely at how I work, the tools I’m using, and see what tweaks I want to make for next year.
There’s something different about this year though.
Yep, you guessed it.
That buzzword that we can’t go a minute without seeing.
AI.
I’ve been experimenting with AI just like everyone else this year (hint: JustIDJobs is powered by AI), and I think a major breakthrough in my thinking is that AI is amazing at taking unstructured input and effortlessly converting it to structured output.
And a perfect application of this capability is in the organization of work.
A lot of the slog of maintaining a digital productivity system is the upkeep of capturing all manner of inputs (notes, images, to-dos, articles, book highlights etc.) and tagging them with the right metadata (date of capture, project its related to, attendees of meetings, etc.) to make it easy to recall and use later.
Being able to do this consistently is the crux of maintaining the system, and if you fall off this wagon your system deteriorates in usefulness very quickly.
I am sometimes good at this, and sometimes (usually in times of higher stress or workload) very bad at it. Though it seems easy to add a few pieces of information every time you capture something, that tiny bit of added friction adds up over the course of the day and eventually you can’t be bothered.
Enter AI.
AI is great at doing this kind of information processing almost instantaneously, across all manner of inputs, and without you having to apply any effort. AI tools can now summarize notes, tag images, clean up data, and some even allow you to have a conversation with information that you’ve saved.
So as 2023 is coming to a close, I’m on the hunt for an AI-powered tool that will take the slog out of my system, and maybe help me achieve the frictionless organization and productivity holy grail.
Right now, I’m playing with a tool called mymind. It features effortless capture through drag and drop or a browser extension, support for a wide range of inputs, AI tagging, color and object recognition for images, and more. It also has a search-first (rather than file system based) philosophy that I’m intrigued by. I’ve been following the development of this tool for some time, but only now find it’s features compelling enough to jump in.
Of all the AI-assisted organization tools I’ve seen, it is also the only one made by a designer, which could make it more relevant to the kinds of information I work with, and gives it an edge in its visual design. It has a touch of beauty and elegance that other tools lack.
It’s still early in my experimentation, and I’ve been through enough tools to know that a shiny new tool isn’t necessarily going to totally change my life. But if I figure out a decent new system for how I organize my work, I’ll be sure to share before the end of the year!
What systems do you have for organizing your work?
Do you have any AI tools to recommend?
3 ways I can help you
LinkedIn for Designers Course My 1-hour downloadable video course that will teach you how to use LinkedIn to grow your design career or business through creating engaging design content.
Book a 1-hour consulting session. Dedicated time to talk about your product, design strategy, business strategy, career or anything else you'd like. Use promo code STUDENT for 80% off if you are a student or young professional (<5 years career experience).
Sponsor this newsletter. Promote your product, service, or offer to 2,400+ designers that get Design Things in their inbox every week. Note: I only promote products that I have personally tested and would recommend.
What did you think of this email?
Your feedback helps me make this newsletter relevant and interesting to you.