Stop Chasing Productivity Systems: Do This Instead

How I Stopped Chasing Productivity Systems and Started Mapping My Own Brain

I’ve tried them all.

Bullet journals. Fancy paper planners. Agile sprints. Notion templates promising inner peace and a 10x ROI on my soul. Somewhere in my Dropbox graveyard there’s a folder called “System Graveyard” with 47 different PDFs titled something like Focus Ritual or THE PLAN (Final REAL).docx.

For years, I believed the right system would save me. I just had to find it. Or tweak it. Or color-code it better.

I’m a woman in my 40s who owns and runs a house in Portland. I’ve written two books. I’ve made rent off my brain for over a decade. You’d think, by now, I’d know how to manage my own time. But when I looked back on the things I actually finished—the things I’m proud of—it wasn’t because a system saved me. It was because I finally started understanding how my brain works.

And that? Changed everything.

The Real Productivity Hack: Studying Myself

I did what I always do when confused: research. I pulled apart every productivity system I’d ever tried, every “life overhaul” I’d ever planned and abandoned. I started mapping which projects I actually completed—and why. Not just the success stories, but the weird little friction points, the ADHD crashes, the quiet resentments I had toward my own to-do list.

The result was not a new system. It was a constellation: a personal, visual map of how I move through chaos. What grounds me. What actually helps. What breaks down under pressure. Which tools make me feel powerful—and which ones silently make me feel like a failure.

What This Series Is (and What It Isn’t)

This is the first in a series of posts I’m writing as a kind of reverse memoir meets user manual. I’ll share:

• The real story behind why systems failed me
• How I built a constellation to hold my chaos
• The unexpected tools that now scaffold my life (spoiler: Claude, Gemini, a shared Google Doc, and one folder named “brain goo”)
• How emotional labor, ADHD, and perfectionism quietly sabotage even the best intentions

And eventually—if it resonates—I’ll share a course. Not a “system,” but a process for building your own. Because the truth is, your brain deserves its own damn architecture.

If your life looks great on paper but still feels like a mess...

...you’re not alone.
And you don’t need a better plan.
You need a map that starts with you.

Sign up: I’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes posts, templates, stories, and sneak peeks of the course I wish I’d had ten years ago.

Let’s draw the stars together.