Hey there, welcome to Gav’s Note.

Let’s talk about tools.

I spent a good part of this week looking at the apps on my phone and my laptop.
I noticed how many of them were installed during a moment of hope.
I thought they would fix something.
Help me think better.
Help me stay organised. Help me write more.

Most of them never lived up to the expectation.
A few stayed for a while, but I eventually outgrew them or forgot why I installed them in the first place.

It made me realise how often I look for clarity in the wrong places.

I have chased the perfect tool for most of my creative life. The next app always felt like the missing piece.
A better writing interface.
A cleaner canvas.
A smarter inbox.
I would test something new, build a little structure inside it, and convince myself this was the one that would finally get me to work the way I wanted to work.

Each time the same pattern returned.
A burst of excitement. A period of frictionless organisation. Then the inevitable fading. I would start to hesitate when opening the app. Ideas stopped landing. Notes became scattered. The glow was gone before I even understood what the tool wanted from me.

It took years to see the problem clearly.
I was treating tools as a replacement for practice.
As if the right layout could take the place of a steady rhythm. As if switching apps would somehow make me more consistent. Nothing changed because I never changed the underlying behavior.

The turning point came when I stopped asking which app was best and started asking a different question.
How do my ideas behave when I am not looking?
Do they return?
Do they connect?
Do they move through a path that makes sense?
My real progress came from studying these quiet movements.

Once I paid attention to the behavior of my system, I stopped caring about the tools. Any decent app was fine because the app was no longer the main character. It became a container. A place where my habits lived, not a source of those habits.

I had been designing systems around software.
Now I design software around the system.

I noticed a few clear shifts.

Move from searching for features to shaping simple rituals.
Move from building complicated structures to maintaining light pathways that I actually use.
Move from chasing perfect organisation to noticing how notes resurface and support the next piece of work.

The more I looked at these patterns, the more obvious it became. Tools only feel perfect when you have no system. Once you have a working system, every tool feels good enough.

A few things I experimented with this week.

I simplified the way I capture notes on my phone. I removed the extra apps and kept a single space for quick thoughts. It helped me see what I actually capture instead of what I think I should capture.

I revisited my Commonplace Journal and noticed I had been forcing structure into it.
I loosened it. I let the entries be short, half formed, sometimes only a sentence. This made the journal more alive. Ideas flowed more easily because I stopped trying to format them at the door.

I also spent some time tracing how old notes return. I followed a few threads and found that the notes I return to are not the ones written neatly. They are the ones that carry a spark. A conviction. A question that still matters. This reminded me to pay attention to meaning, not format.

These ideas showed up in small moments throughout the week.

One morning I opened a new app that people had been talking about. I played with it for a few minutes and realised I was already planning how to move my whole system into it. The familiar pull was there. I stopped. I asked myself if my current system was failing. It was not. I closed the app and moved on.

Another day I wrote a short note while waiting for a coffee. I used the simplest capture method I have. Later in the afternoon that note helped me shape part of this newsletter. The idea had space to breathe because I was not wrestling with structure. The note moved through my system without effort.

During a late evening review, I saw how much mental overhead comes from switching tools. Not from the switch itself, but from the internal reset it triggers.
Every switch, you begin rebuilding everything. You recreate structures. You touch every part of the system until the tool feels like home. It is easy to forget how tiring that process is. I remembered why I stopped doing it.

The more I pay attention to these scenarios, the clearer it becomes. A tool only matters when it gets in the way. If it does not, it becomes invisible. That is the goal. The best tools become quiet. They hold the work without asking for attention.

I am still learning how to build around behavior instead of design. I still feel the pull of new tools when life gets messy. But each week I see a bit more of the pattern. Consistency grows from habits that survive real days, not ideal ones. Once that clicks, the search for the perfect app loses its shine.

If you are in a season of switching tools, notice what you are hoping the switch will solve.

This Saturday I am sharing a full deep dive on Show Your Work by Austin Kleon.

It is a book about treating your creative life as an ongoing signal, not a performance. Small daily traces. Work in progress. Sharing as part of the process instead of a finished product you unveil once in a while.

In the deep dive I will look at how Kleon’s ideas change the way we think about “showing” our work in a noisy environment, how to share without turning into a broadcaster, and how to build a simple habit of leaving visible breadcrumbs from your notes, drafts, and projects.

I will also walk through how I am folding these principles into my own PKM system, so that sharing is a side effect of how I work, not a separate task that needs its own energy.

Follow me on Meta Threads (@gavin.create) for the full deep dive thread.

I am curious how your relationship with tools has changed over the years. Do you still chase new apps or have you settled into a system that feels steady enough?

Feel free to reply. I read everything.

Until next time,
From the desk of Gav.