Google Keep is basically all I need to run my life. Information comes in, I do something with it, and eventually it leaves. This way of capturing information gives me noticeable mental relief. Once an idea, task, or reminder is in the note, I can stop playing it back in my head because I know that it has somewhere to live. I used to describe this as an efficient system that helped me run my life, giving me some semblance of control. This same instinct showed up in my skincare routine, wardrobe catalogue, research processes, and holiday planning. The systems that tended to stick were the ones that make some recurring part of life quieter, reducing the noise.
What I mean by noise
Noise, to me, is more than distraction. It is something that lingers and occupies mental space, even when I am not consciously thinking about it. It might be the fear of forgetting something, the feeling that I am behind or failing to deal with something important, or the friction created by clutter and overconsumption. Although very different on the surface, they share one common feature. They remain mentally active and repeatedly demand some amount of energy while they remain unresolved.
The value of building a system is partly that it forces me to identify the noise in my life more precisely. It is difficult to remove a recurring irritation while it remains a vague sense that something is not working. The deliberate effort of figuring out the root cause of the friction can be just as useful as the system itself.. Once I know what the problem is, I can decide whether it needs a system at all.
A temporary home for unfinished things
My Google Keep setup is a simple example. I maintain one long-running note where ideas, tasks, and fragments of information are dumped as I encounter them. I don’t need to decide immediately whether each item belongs in a research note, a project, a calendar, or nowhere at all. It can sit there until I have enough mental space to deal with it properly. The system works because it lowers the friction of capture and removes the anxiety that I have missed something or will forget it later. Once the item is there, I no longer need to keep it mentally active. I can return my attention to whatever I was doing, knowing that I will encounter it again when I process the note.
Trying to perfectly organise every piece of information as I encounter it would create more noise than it removes. It would require me to interrupt what I was doing, decide how important the information was, and find the correct permanent location for it before I had enough context to know where it belonged. What I really need from Google Keep is somewhere temporary for unfinished things to live. Some items are later promoted into my permanent knowledge system, some become tasks, and some turn out not to matter. The exact route matters less than the relief from knowing that the decision does not need to be made immediately.
When a useful system becomes outdated
Using systems like this to run my life made me increasingly confident in the value of formalising how I operated. Most of the useful ones emerged through years of experimentation. Over time, that confidence hardened into an overconfidence in systems themselves. I became less likely to question something once it had proved useful in my life. I also struggled to see that a successful system could become outdated without becoming obviously dysfunctional.
A system does not need to collapse or become inefficient in order to become harmful. It can keep producing exactly the behaviour it was designed to produce, even after that behaviour no longer suits the life around it. In my case, the most harmful systems were not necessarily the ones that demanded too much maintenance. They were the ones that preserved a mode of attention and behaviour after the original problem and noise had disappeared. I had moved into a different phase of life while continuing to operate according to the needs of the previous one.
An “always on” PhD
I completed a doctoral degree in economics and finance part-time while continuing to work full-time in a quantitative investment role. I finished in around four years, despite having eight years available, which required me to make steady progress on my research during nights after work and weekends. I viewed the PhD as a war of attrition. There was too much work to rely on bursts of motivation. Instead, I needed to chip away at it consistently.
The system I developed was effectively “always on”. Most of my evenings were spent at or around my workstation, with PhD work open on one monitor and something unrelated on the other. I might be cleaning data or searching academic literature while listening to music, watching a movie, gaming, or reading fiction. The arrangement split my attention, but that was also what made the work sustainable. It allowed me to keep moving through the tedious parts without requiring every evening to feel like an act of discipline.
I do not claim this was optimal (it was far from it), but it worked. I completed the doctorate in four years while maintaining my full-time career. My system kept me mentally available for the PhD even on the nights when I would otherwise have made no progress. I could make slow progress on difficult work while still feeling that some part of the evening belonged to me. The problem was that the system did not disappear when the PhD did.
The system after the PhD
For years, I had trained myself to gravitate towards my workstation whenever I had unstructured time. After the doctorate was finished, I would still sit down there in the evening even when I had nothing urgent to complete. I might try to watch something and then almost automatically open a paper, a draft, or a research note on the second screen. An evening spent doing only one enjoyable thing could feel vaguely wasteful, as though some part of my attention should still be producing something. Even when I was physically elsewhere, I often remained mentally available for work. The workstation had become the default location for my life, not because the work demanded it anymore, but because the habit felt normal and, honestly, gave me a sense of comfort and safety.
The noise from the PhD had disappeared. Yet the system I had built to manage that noise was still there. It had not merely organised my evenings. It had trained me to divide my attention, normalised constant availability, and blurred the boundary between work and relaxation. It survived because it felt normal, not because it remained necessary.
Systems train attention
Systems also train forms of attention and expose psychological tendencies. A system can support a tendency, compensate for it, or gradually make it stronger. Their effects can be wider than the task they were originally built to manage.
Sometimes they continue working perfectly for a problem that no longer exists. I now find myself asking whether a system is freeing up more mental space than it consumes. The cost can appear as guilt, rigidity, constant monitoring, or the opportunity cost of continuing to operate in a way that no longer fits. If I am frequently thinking about whether I am running the system properly or feeling guilty because I am not following it, the system may have started creating the same kind of noise it was supposed to remove.
I build a system because I want more control over some part of my life, but maintaining it introduces another object that needs to be managed. The balance changes when the system continues demanding attention after its benefit has faded. At that point, the fact that I have invested time in building it is not a reason to keep it.
Fit matters more than optimisation
A copied system may solve someone else’s noise rather than mine. It might fit their temperament, values, constraints, and current phase of life while creating friction in mine. Borrowing systems can still be useful because many of us face similar problems. The mistake is trying to mould my life around the borrowed structure rather than adapting the structure around my life.
I have often carried a vague sense that I should be doing something because it was supposedly good, efficient, or disciplined, without honestly asking why it was good for me. If I cannot identify the reason, I am probably spending time on someone else’s idea of what matters.
A wardrobe system might begin with a generic capsule wardrobe. But if the clothes do not feel like you, the system will either fail or leave you feeling as though you are wearing someone else’s solution. Once I know why I want a structure in the first place, I can pay attention to how it changes the way I feel and behave. I can ask whether it is reducing the intended friction, whether it is creating another kind of burden, and whether it still reflects the life I am currently living.
What next
I no longer assume that a useful structure deserves to remain indefinitely. Sometimes the system has simply succeeded. The noise is gone, and I no longer need the structure. The harder question may be what happens next, when the quiet I wanted finally arrives and I discover that I no longer know what to do with it.
*AI assistance. Copy-editing, structural feedback, and phrasing suggestions.