The Simple System I Use to Capture and Publish Insights
To start sharing valuable insights with you, I needed a system to capture my discoveries as they appear while keeping my mind from wandering too far off track. Something simple but structured enough to work. That's how "Studio OS"emerged.
At its core, Studio OS uses just five types of notes (keeping it minimal):
Daily Notes (DN): Quick captures throughout the day
Research Thread (THR): Central thinking space for active explorations (right now I'm tracking "Building Studio" and "AI Augmentation")
Research Notes (RES): Processing sources like papers, books, articles or videos
Experiment Logs (EXP): Documenting tests and experiments I'm doing
Notes (NT): Sharing insights with you (like what you're reading now!)
The workflow is deliberately simple (because complexity kills consistency):
Capture thoughts in Daily Notes as they come. Quick brain dumps throughout the day using my ! + → format. No filtering, no overthinking, just capturing interesting stuff as it happens.
Process and organize in Research Threads. Each active exploration (like building this Studio) has its own Research Thread. I review my Daily Notes and move relevant stuff here, organizing thoughts, connecting dots, and seeing what patterns emerge. It's my thinking space for each topic.
Create specific Research or Experiment notes when needed. Research Notes for studying sources, Experiment Logs for testing ideas. I create these only when I need to dive deeper into something specific. Now running two experiments, first on testing this Studio OS, second on visual thinking.
Review all this material and decide what's worth sharing through Notes. Three times a week (Tue, Thu, Sun), I look through everything I've collected and pick interesting bits to share with you. Just enough schedule to stay consistent without overcomplicating things.
For quick captures, I use this basic notation: ! for observations, + for why it's interesting, → for potential content.
Here's some raw captures from last days:
! New work system requires mindfulness and effort
! Need for an end-of-day ritual to review daily notes
→ My self-critic wants to rewrite notes before publishing
→ Authenticity is hard - need to unlearn a lot
→ Should share my approach to researching problems
What I'm learning: This structure gives me peace of mind that I can follow my natural curiosity without losing valuable insights along the way. It's helping me accumulate meaningful material to share with you. Plus, it puts some constraints in place to help keep my intellectual diarrhea in check :-)
Next Up: Testing this system with my two active research threads - building the Studio and AI Augmentation. Also playing with visual thinking and scribbles which I'll show you soon.
— Yarmo Covich