🖋️ Just Right

Rule number one: Write things down.

Rule number two: Don't overthink it! Just write things down.

When you find your mind casting about in all directions or you're straying from a productivity system that used to work, just go back to the darn basics.

When all else fails, just… write. Take out a literal pen, find some literal paper, and literally put that pen to the paper.

If you care about getting things done, chances are you've tried a variety of strategies and products to help you do so. You may have found some that truly work for you—my love for Todoist, for example, is profound and evangelical—but you've probably also found yourself drifting from any given strategy over time. How frustrating it is to build a solid system of productivity only to let your messy humanistic tendencies take over!

And this is where the classic practices come into play. If you don't like your current system, it might be time to put it all aside and pick up the pen.

I came across a clip recently encouraging folks to spend time each morning journaling before doing anything else, before the coffee or the routine, and critically before the phone and the email and the social media of it all.

That advice was just convincing and actionable enough for me to actually give it a shot—unlike all those other videos and articles I save that offer strategies I'll never implement. For the last week or so, I've gone to bed with a notepad and good pen by my bedside. In the morning I've fought the urge to tap straight into my rectangle of dopamine, picking up the pen instead. I don't judge what I write. There's no structure here, and I think that's important. It's literally just about getting the things out on the page, then a few minutes of mindfulness, and then I pick up my phone and it's on with the rest of the day.

Just...write.

There's no shortage of research about the mind-body connection created through this action. Fingers-tapping at a keyboard, or commands dictated through a headset, don't lash into the brainstem in the same way as the physical movements of penmanship. And anyone who has used an LLM to create a document knows that you don't actually internalize what was created because you didn't create it.

And on that penmanship note, if you've ever received a letter from me, you could say a thing or two about the quality of my script. I took the kids with me to the post office (as quasi punishment for being obnoxious and misbehaving throughout the day) which led to my 8-year-old peering over my shoulder as I scrawled an address onto an envelope. A voracious reader, he started perusing some of the letters I was addressing, a collection of donor thank-you notes. "Your writing is really hard to read, Dad.”

At least that succinctly explains why any or all of these donors might not renew their contributions next year.

But even there, the act of writing has been important! Typing an email out to someone has always felt more impersonal than a handwritten letter, and in the age of AI-generated everything, handwriting takes on a new import. It's deeply, undeniably human.

So my friends, just write. Write for and to yourself. Write for and to others. Find a pen you like and a notebook with the right amount of friction to make your thoughts flow. Put it by your bedside, and try to write when you wake. Put a notebook by your laptop to steady your thoughts and find a sense of stability in the middle of a chaotic workday.

Write.

Handwritingly Yours,

—Rye

p.s. While composing this, I became very excited about the idea of a romantic comedy called "Just Write," which would be about some type of meet cute that occurs at a creative writing workshop. A quick search reveals that there's already a movie under that name, but there's no way it's as good as the screenplay I was designing in my head.