Hey,

🎆 Happy New Year! I hope today feels a little slower, a little clearer, and maybe even a bit exciting for what’s ahead.

Welcome to the first Experiments in Progress issue of 2026.

In this issue, I’m breaking down:

Let’s dive in 👇

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New year, clean slate — and instead of chasing “the perfect app,” I built a stack that simply fixes the biggest problems I kept running into.

Not theory. Not shiny tools.

If you’re setting up your systems for 2026, here’s what made the biggest difference for me.

Email quietly becomes a second job.

Stuff to reply to. Stuff to forward. Stuff to save “for later” that I will absolutely never read.

Missive lets me:

So I just tag it, and Missive does all the boring admin, instantly.

Slack. Instagram. Messenger. WhatsApp. Twitter DMs. Discord.

Beeper pulls everything into one inbox.

It doesn’t make me respond faster. It just stops my brain from juggling seven apps at once.

We’d plan one thing in Notion.
Another in a spreadsheet.
Another in some random document called final-final-new-plan-v3.

Nothing stuck.

Is Apple Notes fancy? No.
Does it sync instantly and actually get used? Yes.

Right now, my wife and I are planning our 2026 goals in a shared Note — because the easiest tool is the one you open.

I may still move to something else later… but for now it’s Apple Notes.

Not the big projects — the little things:

TickTick is where I dump absolutely EVERYTHING, then run a simple weekly review.

No fancy dashboards. No complicated boards.

Just: “What needs doing this week?” and then I check boxes.

We’d get ahead… then fall behind… then spend a week trying to catch up.

It wasn’t sustainable.

I sit down and talk.

I tried everything. Half of it felt like toys.

Fun… but not actually helpful in the work I do daily.

And honestly… Gemini keeps improving faster than most tools I’ve tested — because it’s plugged into so much Google data.

We kept buying “better” cameras… and workflows actually got slower.

More buttons. More conversions. More things to break.

We’re moving away from the Sony FX3 setup and going all-in on Lumix.

Why?

It’s less about specs and more about getting to filming quicker.

And if you try any of these, or have tools you swear by, hit reply — I’m always curious what other creators are using.

📱 Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with a friend who’s as obsessed with tech as you are:

If you’re new here — or just missed a few along the way — these were the episodes creators kept coming back to this year.

They’re honest, numbers-on-the-table conversations about what actually happens behind the scenes.

Inside this roundup:

If you want the unfiltered version of growing a creator business, these are a great place to start.

▶️ Catch up on the episodes here

📺 Watch on YouTube | 🎧 Listen on Spotify | 🍎 Listen on Apple Podcasts

If you’ve ever downloaded a fitness app, worn a tracker for two weeks…
then quietly stopped checking it — I’ve been there, too.

In the next issue, I’m breaking down what actually works when it comes to staying active, sleeping better, and building habits that last.

Here’s what you’ll get:

🗓️ See you Saturday.