I’m always looking for new ways to impose order on things / life, and the need to do that can become particularly acute as one year ends and a new year begins.
The transition is possibly more than usually acute for me because the fourth day of the new year (today, 4 January!) is my birthday.
So how to impose order? One reliable procedure: draw up some lists.
But which lists to start with? Here are a few ideas:
Tools I Actually Use – Not overhyped productivity apps that everyone recommends, but the weird, specific tools that make my work possible: audio editor, note-taking method, the physical objects on my desk.
Unfinished Business – Projects I’ve started but haven’t completed, ideas I’ve abandoned (for now), creative experiments that didn’t quite work. This transparency might be useful for others.
Interviews I Wish I’d Done – People I have wanted to talk but couldn’t reach or didn’t even try, subjects I might explore in future podcast episodes.
The Influence Map – Not my obvious influences, but the something more offbeat: the timing of a particular speaker, a film-maker’s editing style, a newsletter writer’s layout or rhythm, a painting I saw that changed how I think about colour.
Places That Changed My Work – Physical locations (with links to maps, photos, or descriptions) where I had breakthroughs, wrote important pieces, or whatever.
The Reading/Watching/Listening Adjacent – Work from adjacent fields that informs mine: anthropologists whose methods influence my journalism, photographers whose composition ideas affect my art, musicians whose audience awareness mirrors what I try to do with, say, my training courses.
Collaborators & Co-conspirators – Not just portfolio links but contextual connections to people I’ve worked with, what I learnt from each collaboration, why their work matters to mine.
Experiments In Format – Other creators doing interesting things with form: newsletters that break conventions, podcasts with unusual structures, videos that challenge typical documentary approaches.
Rabbit Holes I’ve Gone Down – Obsessive research tangents that didn’t make it into published work but fascinated me: niche Wikipedia trails, obscure forums, seemingly mundane topics that turned out to be endlessly complex.
The Rejection File – Pitches that didn’t sell, proposals that went nowhere, ideas that were “too weird” – with links to similar work by others who DID get them published, or context about why the timing was wrong.
Analogue Inspirations – Physical media, objects, or offline experiences that inform my digital work: bookshops, archives, galleries, public spaces, old technologies I still reference.
The Performance Archive Others Built – Recordings of my performances that audience members captured and uploaded, reviews or responses to my work that surprised me, unexpected documentation of my creative output.
Questions I Keep Asking – Recurring themes across my journalism, podcast episodes, or creative work, each linked to multiple pieces where I’ve explored that question from different angles.
Behind-the-Scenes Tech – Boring infrastructure: hosting providers that don’t let me down, backup systems, the way I organise my files, RSS feeds I depend on, email services that actually work for newsletters.
Mistakes Worth Studying – Other people’s fascinating failures in my fields, projects that imploded instructively, ambitious experiments that taught me something by not working.
The Crossover Artists – People who successfully work across the same disciplines I do, showing different approaches to portfolio integration.
Local / Hyperlocal Resources – Geographically specific links relevant to my location or the places I cover: local archives, community projects, regional media outlets, neighbourhood-specific research.
The Anti-Portfolio – Work I deliberately chose NOT to do, opportunities I turned down, creative paths I decided against (inspired by a concept used by venture capitalists, but for creative work).
Maintenance & Repair – People and projects focused on keeping things going rather than always making new things: archivists, maintainers of old websites, curators of endangered formats.
Which of these should I create first? Let me know what you’d most like to see.
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