How I manage my content library in 30 minutes a week
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Hi Reader, Earlier this week, I explained that I use a content library to manage writing and publishing on my blog, email and social media. Using my library, I can quickly and easily find ideas, notes and research when I need it. I also rely on my content library to repurpose old content, like emails, social media posts and even book chapters. A reader wrote in to ask “Where do I keep my content library?” And, “Do you have an index or tracking system for it?” I could give an easy answer and tell you Google Docs, Notion, Roam Research, Airtable, Apple Notes, Scrivener, or some other tool is the best solution. Plug it all into Apple Notes? Tried that. It crashed when I uploaded 1000s of notes. Do it all in Google Docs? Messy and clunky. Upload everything to Roam Research? Steep learning curve. Create a database using Airtable or Notion? Great for organizing, but less so for writing. As you can see, I love geeking out about writing apps. I’ve tried them all. I’ve spent years testing the latest and greatest writing apps. I even reviewed a few for my YouTube channel. Some of these writing apps are great, and some are terrible. FAR too many of these tools are latching onto AI simply because, well, AI is hot right now. And almost all of them want to lock you into their wall garden (never a good idea). The truth is my content library is app-agnostic. I’ve 1000s of ideas and pieces of content inside my library. Extracts from books, articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, courses… Even emails like this one. I can access my library of files and ideas using pretty much any app, on any device. But if my needs change, I’m not locked in. As for organizing and categorizing ideas? I spend about 30 minutes a week going through my library, organizing my ideas and notes from the week gone by. Then, I can pull out pieces of content to work on for the week ahead. Lately, that’s daily emails like this one. Working like this means I can easily resurface old ideas and see how Idea A connects with Idea B. That’s far more intuitive than anything the latest and greatest ChatGPT clone can do. If you’d like to create your content library, check this out. Write on, |