Who best embodies personal, digital & analog organizational strategies, community building, and martial arts? The answer is Katherine Derbyshire.
When we pick up a new skill — whether it’s a martial art, a programming language, or digital organization, it’s a good idea to get advice from those who are experienced in that area, someone who walks the walk. When I first started digging into what productivity and digital organization was all about, I read all the books and scoured the internet, eventually stumbling on the getting things done (GTD) forum. After checking it out, I decided to contact one of the most respected people on that forum: Katherine Derbyshire (aka kewms).
Over the years, she’s been very generous with her advice on how to lay the foundations for my organizational journey. Although my systems are very much my own, I’ve modeled much of my organizing and writing on the advice she’s given me, directly and via her profound comments in those forums. Katherine’s been immersed in the personal organization world for over two decades, so she knows the rules well enough to bend them to suit her own needs. She’s often said,
“If something works for you, then it doesn't matter whether it would work for [anyone else].”
She’s very committed to her systems and leverages them to effectively run her business and to deliver powerful, professional writing.
After working up the courage and emailing Katherine a few questions around organizational workflow and tooling, I was both delighted and honored that she agreed to meet up at the local library. She was very gracious with her time; she demoed her general workflow model and introduced me to few new tools...
DEVONthink (powerful full text database)
Scrivener (best tool for writing anything longer than an email)
Scapple (lightweight “concept mapping” tool)
…that I have since incorporated into my toolchain.
After our meeting, she sent me an an encouraging email with a link to a motivational video by Ira Glass, one that I often return to, when I need a reminder that I’m on a perpetual path of learning on how to develop my craft.
A few years have passed since that initial meeting, and I’m still learning from Katherine and her wide-ranging experience. I hope that you, like me, can be inspired by my interview with her and that it gives you some food for thought.
Interview
MC: Some say that personal organization is a way of life.
How did you first get inspired to manage your time this way?
KD: I don’t think I’d describe it as a Way of Life (™). It’s a set of tools that enables the kind of life I want to have. As a self-employed person, there’s very little external structure, so it’s easy to fall into short term distractions and let longer term priorities slide. It’s also very easy to abandon any semblance of organization in the face of an imminent deadline. So those are the criteria I use to evaluate a system: does it remain robust if I ignore it for a week? Does it help me stay on task for both the short and long term?
MC: I have come to see that for many people, personal organization and time management can be almost meditative.
Do your systems have any rituals or routines, and how do they impact your work?
KD: I think there’s a lot of value in the GTD concept of a Monthly or Weekly review. I try to take some time at more or less regular intervals to see what’s working and what isn’t, where I’m making progress and where I’m not. I try to end each day by closing out – done or deferred – that day’s task list and looking over the next day,
MC: Back in 2006, you announced on the GTD forum that though you had used mainly digital systems for personal organization, you were going back to analog; good old pen and paper! It appears that this shift was sparked by the demands of the work with your clients.
Have you continued to use analog based solutions or has your approach evolved since?
KD: I currently use a digital calendar and contact list to facilitate sharing with other people and across devices. But yes, my core task list and logging tools remain paper-based, and these days are heavily influenced by Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal approach.
With that said, digital tools have evolved a great deal since 2006! In particular, tablets, tools like the Apple Pencil, and accurate handwriting recognition blur the analog/digital distinction. I’m as likely to use my iPad as a paper notebook for interviews and reading notes, for example. So it’s probably more accurate to describe my system as “hybrid” rather than strictly digital or analog.
MC: I am curious about what drew you to the world of organizing information and time initially. You had mentioned that in 2005, you were interested in getting things done (GTD), because you were juggling a lot of different projects and behind on three of them.
Prior to getting things done (GTD), were there any other systems or philosophies in this area that you tested?
KD: I was a big DayTimer user back in the day. In 2005, I had only been self-employed for a relatively short time, and was still figuring out how to manage the freedom (and endless potential distractions!) that entails. So I did a lot of experimenting with different systems, but none really stands out.
MC: In one of our email exchanges, you mentioned that “it’s the nature of the business that writers spend too much time alone. Community is good.” I totally agree with you. In fact, I recently joined Helen Sword’s Writing Catalyst cohort and experienced something new as a writer; community. It was a welcome change, as I found that I was spending way too much time in solitude. I see that you’ve recently been posting tweets with the hashtag #writingcommunity on Twitter.
How has being involved in the writing community supported you?
KD: I think “talking shop” is an important aspect of any community. Programmers talk about data structures and share war stories about weird bugs. Writers brainstorm about character development and play word games. In both cases, what happens between “blank screen” and “finished work” is kind of mysterious and opaque to outsiders. It’s also nice to talk to people who won’t look at me funny when I ramble on about 19th century folklore or whatever.
MC: I am by nature an introvert. I have come to find a kindred spirit in one of my cats, Ducky. She is the perfect writing companion because she mostly ignores me, likes to be where it’s warm, and keeps me company when I get lost in my words. I’ve read that your cats are often also your writing companions.
Why are feline companions such great writing buddies for us introverts?
KD: Less needy than dogs, but just as affectionate in their way. Writers spend a lot of time sitting more or less still in more or less comfortable positions, which says “Self-Heating Cat Cushion” to most cats.
MC: One of my favorite books is “Mastery”, by George Leonard. It’s a book on developing mastery based on his experience with aikido.
As an avid aikido practitioner, have any of the lessons you learned in the martial arts been relevant to your writing and/or digital organization journeys?
KD: Martial arts are sometimes described as “meditation for people who can’t sit still.” Aikido has definitely helped with concentration and focus. It also reminds me every day that learning/mastery is a journey, more than a destination.
MC: On DEVONthink forums, a member of the community was trying to replace DEVONthink with Scrivener (or vice versa), in order to condense all of their workflows into a single tool. Your response was that you don’t favor “Swiss Army [knives], do everything tools”. I’m with you: A certain tool, for a specific job. This very much aligns with the UNIX philosophy; small programs that accomplish a particular task, instead of large, monolith programs designed for a large number of tasks. I’ve also realized over the years that I want to “use my tools more” and not necessarily “use more tools.”
How do you evaluate a tool and whether you should add it?
KD: As I think we’ve discussed, playing with organizational tools can be a great way to procrastinate. So before I really evaluate a tool seriously, I try to consider what problem it claims to solve and whether that’s actually an issue with my current system. I don’t like strictly categorized task lists, for instance – that’s one reason why I drifted away from GTD – so there’s no point in evaluating a tool where “lots of metadata per task” is presented as an advantage.
Once a tool passes that hurdle, I’ll spend some time reading about it – user forums, software reviews, sites like yours – then maybe try it out for a single project. Lots of tools fail at this stage. Since I’m more or less happy with my current system, I’m very impatient with tools that have a steep learning curve without a clear benefit. (And pretty confident – MIT and all that – that if I find a tool frustrating it’s not because *I’m* stupid, which some vendors seem to believe.)
If I still find a tool useful after all that, I’ll pay for the software, buy the special notebook, do whatever investment is involved in adding it to my workflow. Which may or may not be permanent. It’s not uncommon, six months down the road, for me to realize that I’m just not using a tool as much as I expected. And there are also tools that are perfect in certain circumstances, but I just don’t encounter those circumstances all that often.
Of course, one of the advantages of a paper-oriented system is that it’s very easy to tweak the “interface” over time. If I need a new list, I just turn to a blank page. I’m not “using” GTD or Mark Forster’s Do It Tomorrow method, but their ideas certainly inform my system design. It’s not like software, where you’re either using OmniFocus or you’re not. (I’m not, FWIW.)
MC: I always try to strike a balance between developing processes and frameworks that are tool agnostic. This allows me to transition between tools when needed, if, for example, one of them has been deprecated. Once in a while, though, I discover a tool which feels so essential to my process that I go all in. You once shared your love for the writing tool, Scrivener, on Thin Film Tumbling, and suggested to your readers that if they write anything longer than a thank you note or a grocery list, they have to try Scrivener.
Are you still a Scrivener fan? What was it like before Scrivener and what has changed?
KD: It’s more accurate to say that Scrivener matches the way I’ve always preferred to write. Discovering that it existed was like putting on a pair of custom-made shoes.
To elaborate a bit, my writing approach is very tactile: index cards, diagrams of relationships, that sort of thing. Conventional word processors are designed around a single long “scroll” of text, which makes moving “chunks” around very clumsy.
MC: You often write about very complex topics in the field of semiconductors. I can imagine that since you are on the bleeding edge of technology, you’re often responsible for exploring new topics that you might not have much experience with, and have to write about them in depth. You and I agree that writing is not a linear process; you don’t just start at A, move to B, and end up at C. Writing is often circular and recursive.
So when you’re writing about emerging technologies, where do you start, when the starting line is yet to be defined? How do you approach your research when your topic is ground-breaking?
KD: I’m not personally doing the research, though, I’m just writing about work that people in the industry are doing. I go to a lot of conferences (virtually, since the pandemic), read a lot of technical articles, talk to a lot of researchers. I haven’t yet found a topic where those resources failed me.
MC: You recently received an honorable mention from the Epic Group Writers during the 2022 adult poetry contest. Congratulations!
Do you think that technical and organizational articles can be poetic, and if so, how do you weave poetry into your writing, like the articles you write for the Semiconductor Engineering website?
KD: I think any writing can be poetic, but I don’t consciously think about “weaving poetry in.” I think more about (1) the story arc I’m trying to develop, (2) the technical details that support that arc, and (3) the flow and ideally lyricism of each sentence and paragraph.
MC: You studied material science at MIT and UC Santa Barbara.
Did you have any desire to write professionally or more prolifically in those days?
KD: Writing has always been an important interest. I was just a few courses short of a writing minor at MIT.
MC: How did your early studies shape and inform the way you organize, and the type of work you do today?
KD: The kind of writing I do would be impossible without a technical background. Engineering and laboratory research also taught me the importance of taking good notes, and of a system to find them later.
MC: As writers, we are usually avid readers.
Who are five of your favorite fiction and non-fiction authors?
KD: I think any writer who can limit themselves to five probably doesn’t read enough. So this is today’s list, but it might be different next week or next month. In no particular order.
Atul Gawande, writes about mortality, medical systems in the US and elsewhere, patients, doctors, etc. with the precision of an expert and the ear of a poet.
Dennis Lehane, noirish fiction, from Boston mobsters to Prohibition bootleggers. Proud inheritor of Raymond Chandler’s legacy.
Mary Oliver, poet and teacher of poetry. Demonstrates with every line just how much meaning a syllable or a line break can carry.
Joy Harjo, musician, first Native American US Poet Laureate. A voice of ancient wisdom and modern concerns.
Timothy Egan, historian of the American West.
Interviewee Bio
Katherine Derbyshire has a BS in materials science and engineering from MIT, and an MS in materials from UC Santa Barbara. She writes about semiconductor manufacturing, climate-focused technology, and a range of other topics.
Nice interview, I write lists of tasks on the backside of used copy paper of which I keep until each task has been completed or is no longer relevant. Some of my lists are years old now. What I find interesting about this process is I often bury old task list only to “rediscover” one 6 months later and see that I completed everything. Magic🪄I’ll check out a few of these recommendations as I’m spending more of my time writing these days. Thanks for sharing.