🐿️ Join Our Next Create Your Idea Collection Systems Cohort — Back by Popular Demand!

Transform your idea-capturing systems from friction to flow; details below 👇

Hi Friends,

If you have big creative ideas bubbling, but your notes are scattered across various apps, browser tabs, voice memos, notebooks, and forgotten fragments you thought you’d remember but don’t—I see you! And I’ve been there.

As AI writing slop continues sliming across the Internet, the best way to stand out now depends on your ability to curate, synthesize interesting sources, and express yourself—your true self—with heart, soul, and your own quirky voice. Don’t let scattered systems get in the way of that!

That said, I will show you how Notion’s new AI features can enhance your workflow behind the scenes, giving your creativity an even bigger boost and freeing your mind from busywork and bottlenecks so you can do even more of your best work.

If your idea-capturing systems are disorganized (or nonexistent), it would be my greatest joy to help organize your mind and get more of your best ideas into the world. After a successful pilot at the end of 2025, I’m bringing back the two-day Idea Collection Systems workshop this Spring, and I would love for you to join us!

When I ran this in December, I was worried that not even five people would sign up; to my delightful surprise, we ended up with seventy students! Here’s what one said:

“This class was life-changing in so many ways!
It will help me capture ideas faster and write more. Thank you!”

🙋🏻‍♀️ More About My Background

I set up my first proper digital collection bucket in September 2021 (also referred to as a commonplace book), after reading How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens.

Setting up this system sparked new creative magic for me, as I started connecting disparate stories and snippets in unique ways. I’m only going to toot my own horn here for a brief moment, to show you what is possible when you have a home for the random, serendipitous idea-scraps that fly across your day (that’s just one metaphor, several more to follow since I can’t help myself 😂).

With the help of this idea-collection bucket system . . .

• I wrote and published my third book, Free Time, in one year; my two previous books took three years each.

• For over two years, I published twice-weekly personal essays at Rolling in Doh about the stickier sides of self-employment; that’s nearly 350,000 words, the equivalent of five non-fiction book-sized drafts. My collection bucket system helped me re-embrace my writer identity and dormant creative expression.

• Before pausing my two podcasts, for two years I produced fourteen episodes a month, aided by this system (alongside an incredible production team), including: weekly Pivot episodes, twice weekly Free Time (one solo, one guest), and two private episodes for the BFF community.

What creative superpowers are lying dormant for you, waiting to be unlocked?

My best writing doesn’t start when I sit down to draft: I save these idea ingredients multiple times a day, throughout every day, so that when it’s time to write, I’m synthesizing more than thinking from scratch (that’s a recipe for writer’s block).

🌰 What do squirrels, acorns, and compost piles have in common with your creative process?

💡🪣✨ Back by popular demand, Create Your Idea Collection System is a two-day workshop that will give you the tools and practices to build a rich, intuitive system for generating ideas and accelerating creativity; one that saves time, enhances your thinking, feeds your curiosity, and provides abundant material to work with when you’re ready to create.

Novelist Ann Patchett writes:

“I am a compost heap, and everything I interact with, every experience I’ve had, gets shoveled onto the heap where it eventually mulches down, is digested and excreted by worms, and rots. It’s from that rich, dark humus, the combination of what you encountered, what you know, and what you’ve forgotten, that ideas start to grow.”

Together, we will build the container for all your rich idea compost. You will learn to move through the world like a squirrel, pocketing away quotes, questions, stories, facts, photos, writing samples, snippets of overheard dialogue, and other miscellaneous acorns that pique your curiosity throughout the day.

You’ll learn how to tuck these treasures into your digital collection bucket, connecting new acorns to similar, related older ones—with everything readily available when it’s time to synthesize your experiences and thinking into new work.

Once a rough draft takes shape, intuition and serendipity also work their magic, dropping just-right acorns into your awareness (often at the last minute) to round out the final version.

🌱🐿️ This class will provide ready-made templates and teach you practical daily creative habits to use them, so that you, too, can become an expert idea composter and acorn-collector :)

🪞 Who this course is best for:

If you’re working on something big this year, and you have scattered notes everywhere but no system for making sense of them, this class is for you.

• Who it’s best for: Anyone working on a project that requires your original thinking and/or writing (such as newsletters, essays, books, courses, etc.)

• Prerequisite: You are already using Notion, or curious about how to use it, and willing to experiment with it during our time together.

✅ Over two 90-minute sessions together, we will cover:

• Setting up your own idea collection system in Notion

• Building a collection habit—expanding the range of what you collect as you move throughout your day

• Labeling systems to help create connections between ideas

• Curating from your collection when it’s time to write or create (i.e. for a book, essay, newsletter, course, etc.)

• Leaning into your intuition and serendipity

If you’re working on something big this year, and you have scattered notes everywhere but no system for making sense of them, this class is for you.

👉 What’s Included:

• You will get: Two 90-minute sessions (plus recordings), five done-for-you templates so you’re not setting up your Idea Collection system from scratch, and detailed follow-up notes.

• Format: Within each session, we’ll have a mix of instruction and a handful of quick 5-10 minute creative practices to accelerate what you collect every day.

• Timing: We will meet live from 12 p.m. ET to 1:30 p.m. ET, two days in a row. (After you enroll, you will get a link to add the second session to your calendar.)

• Recording: Sessions will be recorded if you can’t make it live, or if you need to step out at any point.

Hit reply if you have any questions before enrolling — I would love to see you there! Happy Friday and Weekend :)