Storing Momentum: The System I Use So I Never Have To Create from Scratch

Laura: Hello, hello, welcome. If you ever have bags of energy or inspiration at the wrong time and then when you need to get something done you feel like you’re suddenly running on empty, then you’ll probably find this presentation helpful. I’m Laura. My short-ish presentation is about storing momentum so that I never have to create anything from scratch.

Let’s start with the problem that I needed to solve. I live with two chronic pain conditions and that means how much energy I have, whether or not I can focus, and whether or not I can get stuff done varies very unpredictably. In an ideal world, my working life would mean that I could go with the flow and I could work when I felt most able to and rest when I needed to. In reality, I have to fit my work around my family which means I need to work in the pockets of time between running errands, chores, and time when my teenage boys need me. I’m a copywriter and a marketing mentor which means I am often working around my clients’ deadlines. I need to be able to jump in, pick up a piece of work and create content, write sales copy or write any marketing copy, and make progress as quickly as possible whenever that window of opportunity to work arises.

In this presentation, I’m going to be talking about a simple solution I’ve been using for three or four years. It means that any time I need to create anything for my own business or for one of my clients, I’ll have notes and ideas to hand to get me started and so effectively I’m able to store some energy or some momentum for me to pick up and give me a boost when I next begin working on that project. I’ve used it for marketing emails, sales funnels, even entire courses, and of course, I used it to create this presentation.

This system is based on a tool called Notion but I reassure you this is not a 20-minute-long advertisement for using Notion. I’m pretty certain you can use any database-type platform; Trello, Asana, I’ve used them all but I’ve forgotten what they all do. Watch the presentation, you’re welcome to take from it whatever works for you, adapt it to your way of working, your business, your brain, and whatever platforms you already use. You definitely don’t need to start learning an entirely new platform in order to get value out of this presentation.

I’m going to talk about how this system evolved because it wasn’t one idea and then, “Ta-da, this is how I use it.” It’s gone through a few stages to get to the place where it is now. To begin with I used to have a to-do list of things I needed to create and a pretty good awareness of when I would feel my most creative and when the deadlines for those things were. Then I would slot times into my schedule for when I was going to focus on them.

For example, if I had a sales page I needed to create for a client, I know that I’m most productive in terms of copywriting first thing in the morning, so I would make sure that I had no appointments and my husband was taking care of all domestic errands so that I could wake up, grab a coffee and I could spend three hours writing the first draft of a sales page. I felt pretty smug about being that organized, about having that level of self-awareness to know this is when I’m most creative, this is when it’s easier for me to create content or write copy, and arrange my diary accordingly.

However, when I sat down to write that blog post or a marketing email or that page of sales copy, it still felt like a bit of a slog because I would be just staring at a blank screen and just knowing I had this requirement to get this thing done at this particular moment in time. Sometimes that felt like a bit of pressure as well which made it even harder for me to be able to get started on it. I knew I needed to evolve, I needed to get better, just scheduling alone was not going to be enough to help me reach my peak productivity with creating content.

I realized that the idea-generation phase of the content was what was draining my energy. Staring at that blank screen and thinking, “I need to write a blog post, what am I going to write about?” was causing a lot of friction. I decided to separate it out and create a really simple way to store content ideas. Whenever a content idea came up, like I’d be answering a client’s question or replying to someone in a Facebook group or something just came up in my mind when I was peeling potatoes or doing something boring, I would capture those ideas and I would write them down on a card and I would keep them. I’m just looking for my deck.

This is what I ended up with for a while, so it’s like a flip card of the revision cards and they’re on a ring; a key ring type thing. When I had an idea or an idea came up, I would just write on it. On the front, I’d write the title of the idea and on the back, I would have a little bit more information that I would want to include. I probably didn’t know if that was going to be a blog post or a social media post or what I was going to do with it but it was just a concept, put it on the card. There’s a whole bunch of empty cards as well ready for me to write on. It was on this ring binder. I had a hook in my office, I’d just hang it there so it was really easy for me to get hold of whenever I wanted to store an idea, or when it was time to write something, I would just pick up the deck, scroll through it and pick whichever one I felt most like writing at the time.

Again, for a while there, I felt pretty smug about being that organized. After using that for a while, I noticed that there was a restriction in this system which is there wasn’t really much opportunity to expand on an idea. I would write down the idea but if the same concept came up again later and I answered someone else’s question on it and I was like, “Oh, that’s a new take on it,” it was really hard to expand on an idea, or if I had written out a very thoughtful answer in a Facebook group, what did I do with that? That was already the basis of a blog post or a social media post. Unless I used it straightaway, that content was kind of getting lost. This was limited

Also, I started to come up with ideas for bigger pieces of content like courses which, to be honest, I did actually start sometimes having different colors. The yellow stack is for my course on About pages. My blue stack will be for the course on Sales pages. The system didn’t work for creating bigger pieces of content like courses. I had reached the limit of this. I started to use notebooks. Again, every single idea was written down but then I just had stacks and stacks of notebooks and it was getting really hard to retrieve the ideas and continue to build on one idea.

The other thing that I found frustrating was if I was working on bigger projects, I would get some momentum going– For example if I started working on a course about how to write your About page, I would get some momentum going and then I would need to switch my focus because it was time to cook dinner or I had to go and pick someone up or needed to feed the cats. I had stuff in my life that I needed to do. Then, a couple of days later when I went back to that same project I’d lost all of that momentum and it was really hard to get going again and get back into the flow, remember where I was, and pick up from where I left off.

Next phase. At this point, I need to give a shout-out to Jonathan Stewart who listened to what I needed and introduced me to Notion which is the platform where I store my ideas on. I had never heard of it before they mentioned it. They listened to my ideas and built out a workspace that I continue to use to this day. I think it’s three or four years since we worked together. In that time, I have pulled it apart, reshaped it, made it my own, but I definitely could not have gotten started without having someone listen to what I needed, present this as a possible solution, and give me something to get started with.

Now, inside my Notion account, I have lots and lots of different tables. The one that you need to know about for the presentation is the one I call Work in Progress. Basically, everything in the table starts off as an idea. This is an example of my work-in-progress table. I can’t do a tour inside my Notion account because there’s a lot of client information or client projects that are in there and I just wouldn’t feel comfortable in case I accidentally shared something that I’m not supposed to share so I’ve just mocked up a table here. That’s basically how it works. It’s just a table. If I have an idea for something I create a line, “Course about welcome sequences; I would like to create a course about that in the future.”It just sits there, at the moment, it’s got nothing in it.

Then if I answered someone’s question in a Facebook group about, “What would you suggest I put in my welcome sequence?”- actually, I think I did do an answer for a podcast episode where I talked about welcome sequences- I would then take that content and I would just add it in here, copy and paste it. If it was a Voxer voice note, I can download it and get a transcript for it and put that in here. If I mentioned it on a podcast interview with somebody else, again, I could get the transcript and put it in here. Basically, in the next few months, anytime I talk about what to include in your welcome sequence, I would just copy and paste the information here, and then when I am ready to sit and create a course about welcome sequences, I will open this page up and I will already have it there. I just would be moving stuff around, not creating anything from scratch.

This is a copy of the notes that I used to actually create this presentation. Let me see if I can handle having two things open at once. This presentation began when Claire sent me an email inviting me to speak at the summit. Obviously, I replied straightaway, “Absolutely, yes, I want to be in it.” The 2021 version of me would have replied to that email, felt very smug about how like, “Yes, ta-da, I have replied to the email, good for me.” Then I would have diverted my attention to whatever else was on my to-do list for that day.

The 2024 me doesn’t do that. 2024 me tries to make the most of my focus while I have it. What I mean by that is Claire sent me an email saying, “Do you want to talk at my summit?” I was like, “Yes, absolutely,” reply, “Yes, definitely want to be part of it.” Then I immediately started a page called Neurodiverse Entrepreneur Summit. I copied and pasted the information from her email in here. I make sure I’ve got like all the links to whatever I’m going to need as well. Then I started work just for a few minutes– Literally this took- I don’t know- two minutes, three minutes of me thinking about the question that she posed in that email which was what are the ways in which I have adapted my business to work with my brain. I jotted down a few ideas of things that I had done.

I also had an opportunity to book a conversation with Claire to talk through what my presentation might be about. I took all of those ideas to her. Then we came up with a bunch of other ideas and this is where this idea of a Spoonie’s Guide to Content Creation came about. After that conversation with Claire, I didn’t then finish the Zoom chat and get on with something else., I rode that wave of momentum, opened this page, and just wrote down all the things we talked about. It doesn’t make any sense. This does not make any sense. You couldn’t use it for anything. It’s just scraps of ideas. Then I closed it down and got on with whatever else I needed to do because I wasn’t ready to create the presentation yet. It wasn’t a pressing priority, it wasn’t anywhere near the deadline so it was hard for me to motivate myself to do it, and I had other things I needed to do. I got that far. I got as far as writing down some ideas after our conversation.

Then on the 4th of April, Claire sent me the speaker agreement and I also needed to fill out something that said, “This is what the name’s going to be,” and the tagline so it could be used in the promotion. I didn’t need to have the presentation ready but I did need to know what it was going to be called and I needed to know vaguely what the promise of the presentation was. I filled out the speaker form. Then I thought okay, riding that wave of momentum, now I’ve put some effort into thinking about what it’s called and what the tagline is, I came back to this document and I added in some more ideas of what would possibly go in the presentation. Again, look at the state of it. Look at the spelling. It says “dolvumenting.” Only I could read this of what this actually meant. There are abbreviations. I used CBNL as Comfy Business Newsletter. That’s my newsletter. CMM means Comfy Marketing Makeover. That was a course I was working on. Again, you don’t need to know what these words say. It’s just examples, just ideas that came to me after I filled out the form.

Then a few weeks ago, I recorded an interview with Claire. Apologies, Claire, if I have spelt your surname wrong there, which I probably have. To be fair, I have misspelt about 20% of the words on this page. I had an interview with Claire. We talked about adapting our business to the way our brains work and a bit about this summit. I’m going to use that interview for promotional purposes to get people to register for the summit. Again, as soon as I finished that interview, I didn’t then go back to my to-do list, I rode the wave of momentum, came back to this page. I was, “Yes, okay, da, da, da, here are some ideas that we got off of that interview.” I knew there was a quick to-do list of, “This is what I need to do now to be able to get ready to complete this presentation.”

Today, I have sat down to create this presentation. There was never a time when I sat down and stared at a blank piece of paper and thought, “Oh, I’ve got to write a presentation that’s about this thing.” What I was doing was taking an interaction that came to me– The interactions came to me. The email invite came to me. I picked it up, I responded to the email and I rode the wave of that momentum to capture some ideas that came up for me just while I was focused on this summit. It’s easy for me to book in for a chat with Claire, but that was no effort at all. Then after the conversation, I rode the wave of that momentum and captured as much of it as I could on that one page about the presentation.

Every time I had an interaction that had to do with this presentation, before I put that thing down, before I switch my focus to something else, it’s like I’m trying to squeeze out, “Is there anything of value I can squeeze out of this interaction or this moment of focus and store it so that when I do need to come and create this presentation, I can just pick that up and run with it. I’m not having to create anything from scratch.”

That meant today, this morning, 6:30 this morning, I woke up and I was like, “Now’s the time. I feel like I have the energy to create this presentation.” I was opening up that Notion page that I just showed you. This here, the color-coded one, is a copy of this page of scrappy notes and spelling mistakes. Then I just moved things around to where they needed to be and then added headlines and expanded it so that it was full sentences. Sometimes I don’t need full sentences to do a presentation. I often just need bullet points. Today is the tail end of a migraine day so I knew that to be able to speak out loud and record this presentation, I would need a lot more on the screen for me to read through rather than just bullet points that I was then bouncing off of. There you go. That’s how I used the process to create this presentation.

Before I talk about, “Here’s what I think will help you make this work,” I want to just mention why I think this works for me. I do not enjoy switching tasks at all. I find it really frustrating to switch my attention from something I’m currently focused on and then have to think about something new. There’s a lot of friction when I do that. I also feel a lot of frustration. My windows of time when I feel mental clarity and I’m able to focus and I have the energy and I’m not experiencing any pain and I can get on and get into creation mode, they feel so few and far between that when I have to stop and switch my focus on something else, I find that incredibly frustrating. This system gives me a bit more of a gentle handover. When I’m focused on one thing, it allows me to almost create a handover. Before I switch my focus, I’m writing up a few notes that will be useful to my future self who is going to have to pick up that project later.

It tells me what I was doing, what was I in the middle of thinking or doing, what else would I like to think about, explore, do next. It just makes it so much easier for me to put the project down. Then when I need to pick that project back up again, it’s much easier for me to get back in the mood and start focusing on it. The notes look horrendous. This is in no way something that I could hand over to somebody else and go, “Here, now you can pick this project up and get on with it.” For me, because I do understand what those things mean, it acts as a briefing document to get me back into the headspace and start working on it without this initial friction of, “What was it I was thinking about?” Smaller pieces of content, I don’t ever have to think, “Oh, what am I going to write in this blog post,” or, “What shall I post on social media today?” Because I can just pick up an idea that’s already a half-baked idea that I just need to put in the oven and finish off rather than creating something from scratch.

Here is what I think you would need to make this work. I’m not going to say you absolutely need to have Notion, so that’s a relief. I do think you need some flexibility in your schedule. I couldn’t do this if my clients’ one-to-ones were scheduled back-to-back. I don’t have meetings back-to-back because that would not be fun for my brain anyway. I need to have some white space in my calendar, just 5 or 10 minutes flexibility so that I can capture the ideas as I get them. After client calls in my calendar settings, people aren’t allowed to book back-to-back. There’s always 5 or 10 minutes’ space. It just gives me the time to decide if I had a Voxer chat, is there anything in that conversation that was worth downloading? I can also star the messages. Then I can go back through and download starred messages, upload the transcripts, and move them to whatever project they need to be moved into.

This is not every conversation. It’s just, I don’t know, maybe 20% of the time I’ll have a conversation and I’ll think, “That is worth saving, that can go in a course later,” or, “That would be a blog post all on its own,” or, “It would be a great marketing email.” Equally, if I’m replying to people’s emails, I’m dealing with a customer service thing where someone’s got a question about one of my courses, I’m responding to someone in the Facebook group, it’s just having some spare time in my calendar to be able to do the thing I need to do and then think about, “Okay, can I repurpose?” Effectively, I’ve just created some content for one person. “Can I repurpose that in any way to add it to a course or use it on a marketing email, social media post? How can I get maximum value out of this thing I’ve already created from this idea I’ve already had, from this interaction I’ve just had?” That’s number one. Need the flexibility in my schedule to be able to have the time to go that extra step to make use of something.

The second thing I needed was a system for storing my ideas. The three things I love about my system are it’s really, really easy for me to search. Notion has a search function. As long as I can remember one or two words that would possibly appear on one of those pages, I can get back to them. If I have an idea of, “Oh, I would like to create a course that tells people how to get maximum value out of their Thank You pages.” I wonder if I’ve ever already started work on something like that because I have ideas, put them down. Three years later, I have the same idea again. I could search for, “Thank You pages,” or, “Best use of Thank You page,” or, Post-purchase,” maybe I used that phrase instead, or, “Post opt-in.” I could use a few phrases, put it in the search bar just to really drill into the pages I’ve already got, and check, “Have I ever started work on this idea before?” Chances are, I probably have. Again, I can pick that up and build on it rather than starting from scratch.

The first thing I absolutely love about my system is searchables. It’s really easy for me to retrieve ideas, check whether I’ve had an idea in the past before or not. Because it’s in this table form where you can see the idea and then you can click on it and it opens up a page about that idea, it’s really easy for me to expand and keep all of the information in one place. Notion is available as an app on my phone. I have an iPad and my laptop, so there’s always some device near me and I can like quickly open it and store it. That’s one of the reasons I love this, it’s really easy to grab and use it. Notebooks similarly, I always carry notebooks around with me. It’s probably the reason I struggled to use another online system because I didn’t like the interface, using it on my phone felt really difficult. Having something that was really easy to grab was really important for me.

Then the third thing is just having the discipline to use it. Noticing when I’m focused on a thing, before I switch my focus to something else, can I squeeze any last bit out of this focus, store it in some way so that my future self can pick it back up and run with it. Just having also the discipline to be willing to check for and retrieve ideas before I start something new, which I do struggle with. I come up with an idea and I’m like, oh, “This is amazing.” I start writing it out and then I think, “I don’t know, this feels kind of familiar.” Then I’ll look it up and realize that, “Yes, you already wrote this blog post before.” Having this discipline to go back and check, “Did my past self already have this idea and how far did I get with it?”

In a way, as I’m talking about this, I’m imagining that it’s not dissimilar to having a system to work with my team, but my team is my past self, my current self, and my future self, and I need to have a system to communicate between all three versions of myself that are going to work. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make any sense to anyone else, as long as my past self, my current self, and my future self can interact across this platform, then that’s all I need.

Okay, finally, here’s what to do next. I have a free 30-minute training, which I’m very proud of. It has absolutely nothing to do with what we talked about today, but it is something that a lot of online business owners struggle with. I thought I’d mention it at the end here anyway. Also, if you liked my style here, if you like what I talked about here, I just think you’re going to enjoy this training. It’s called the Humble Mumble Cure, and it will help you confidently promote your online service or products without feeling like a boastalicious, slimy, sleazebag, salesy person. All the stuff where you feel like, “Oh, I can’t do that, that’s not me,” yes, it’s going to help you with that. You can get it by going to worditude.co.uk/humble.

I hope that was helpful and I hope you enjoy the rest of this very fabulous summit, which I am very happy to be a part of. I’ve been Laura, thanks for watching. Goodbye.