People often ask me how I manage to accomplish so many things. Many things, not everything, which may sound like a needless distinction, and is instead the whole point. Because the gap between those two words is exactly what a good system is meant to protect. At the base of anything I actually accomplish, there are processes built over the years to simplify every decision without losing the awareness behind it.
I have spent nearly twenty years as a strategic marketing consultant, mostly with small and mid-sized companies and with in-house marketing teams that want direction more than an extra pair of hands. The method I make available to my clients begins where my week begins: with planning, well before any tool. From the yearly planning I do in December, to the monthly version, down to the time I set aside each week to write my reviews and adjust the course, it is these processes that hold when concentration dips or energy runs low. I do not wait for inspiration, because it is an unreliable guest, and systems earn their keep precisely on the days it fails to show up.
The tools I use every day
Which tools do I actually use every day to organize my work? A paper planner at the center of everything, Google Calendar for availability and appointments, Toggl to track my time, an iCloud archive sorted by project, Apple’s focus tools, and Obsidian as the general repository. On their own, none of them is remarkable. What matters is how they talk to each other.
I start with paper, because writing by hand is still a daily tool I cannot replace. The planner is my main one, and it comes with me everywhere: planning pages, monthly spreads for the quick glance, and generous daily pages with room for both appointments and task lists. That is where ideas turn into actions with a date and a time.
On the digital side, I keep three synced Google Calendar accounts: one for sharing availability, one for recurring appointments, and one for calls. Toggl is where I log my hours and assign them to projects and clients, so that invoicing becomes a check rather than an archaeological dig; in the stretches when my concentration clouds over, I also use it to run the work in pomodoros. The iCloud archive holds all my files sorted by workflow, category and project, and Apple’s focus tools do the quiet work nobody sees: almost every notification off, different apps on dedicated devices, a few “Do Not Disturb” filters set for the various parts of the day, and a work phone I switch off when I am not available (I have not completed my cardiac surgery residency yet, so I can afford to 😉).
The repository for everything else, from active projects to lists of all kinds, has been Obsidian for some time now. For years, that role belonged to Evernote, which I had used as a power user since 2011 (until Bending Spoons bought it), and then to Notion. This time, I chose a tool that keeps my notes in plain sight on my own computer.
Years ago, I designed an “ideal week” template in Trello, a structure that has changed shape many times and always gives me a base to start from. There was a lockdown version and a holiday version, which goes to show how far from fixed the whole thing is. The template holds together the administrative, unspoken work that self-employment entails and that no one reminds you to handle, and it keeps a heavier load from breaking the routines that keep me upright.
The two rules I do not bend on
There are two things I give no discount on. The first is that, barring travel or events, the weekend stays free of work: on Saturdays and Sundays, I do not check emails, and I keep the work phone off. The second is that after long assignments, I always take two days of rest, and when I cannot line them up with the weekend, I take them anyway. I know there are people who check email and messages at any hour, and that a freelancer is assumed to be always working. I am not. If I tried, within a month, I would be in bed with a fever.
The rules I have described were not dreamed up at a desk. I built them and tested them over years in which work shared the day with a family and caregiving load that was anything but light. A system that holds through a deadline that slips or a project that gets complicated. Boundaries, after all, only work when they resemble the life of the person setting them. Choose your own and never feel like you need to justify them.
Vision and daily work
How does the yearly vision connect to the work of any given day? The planning I do in December turns into monthly applications, then weekly ones (every Friday, Sunday, or Monday morning), then daily ones, from the largest design to the smallest detail. It is this link that lets me follow projects on completely different timelines without losing sight of the long-term goals. A bad day does not move the year’s course, as long as the year’s course is written down somewhere.
The two principles behind everything
When I plan, when I execute, and even when I iron T-shirts, two principles guide me.
The first is “good enough”. I ask myself where the twenty percent of effort sits that produces eighty percent of the result, and when that eighty percent is already enough to reach the goal I have in mind, I stop. Perfection does not exist in nature, nor in the things people do; however much we insist on demanding it, chasing it remains the surest way I know to finish nothing. The work is to decide in advance what gets my hundred percent and where seventy is plenty, which is the difference between care and perfectionism: the first chooses, on purpose, the details that matter, while the second loses itself in all the others. For a brand, it works exactly the same way; the finishing only counts where it creates impact.
The second principle is alignment with vision and values. Every project, every task, every “yes” I say has to sit within the direction I have set for myself and the things I believe in. When they do not match, the project is a perfect candidate for “no”. Learning to say that no took me time, and above all, it took accepting that saying it well, with respect and at the right moment, is itself a form of care: toward the person in front of me and toward the commitments I have already taken on. A calendar full of yeses given out of inertia is just a crowded calendar.
In practice, this means I keep Obsidian open at all times, ready to take in ideas as they arrive and hand them back when it is time to act. I keep the planner on the desk, because that is where ideas get a date. And I treat every plan as a track and never as a cage, so that when something falls through or has to move, I take it for what it is, the very reason the system exists.
Whatever system you choose, this is what it should be for: to allow you to accomplish what matters, not to do more in general.
Confession: this post began as a LinkedIn article published in August 2025 for a small series called “Scuola d’agosto” (August school). I tried to adapt it lightly for the blog, where I wanted it to live by my own rules. That too is a useful “lesson”: content can be repurposed.
Cover image by Jason Leung from Unsplash.
