Notes from the Grimoire: September 2025
Tap here to jump down to the TL;DR
It feels so funny to start this without a PACT from the previous month! But honestly it's been nice to have a little break and take some time to step back and reflect on the past few months.
That said, after the system overhaul I did in August, things have been settling into a good rhythm. Over the past few weeks I've been practicing zooming out to look for patterns that might help inform my planning for the next quarter, so I'll start with the housekeeping-type things I have to share as a result.
Housekeeping
Posting Schedule Update
First, and most importantly: I'll be switching to a bi-weekly posting schedule for ongoing series (currently The League of Executive Dysfunctions).
I'll still be shooting for posts to go up around midday (EST) between Tuesday and Thursday, but I've been experimenting with the posting timeframe so they may float outside that window now and then for a while yet.
I made this decision because these pieces are taking longer to research, write, and edit. The heavy hitters in The League have more research available, and present with more nuanced manifestations, and I'd like to give each one the attention it deserves. Especially since I've committed to providing less-obvious tools and strategies wherever I can, with the hope that anyone from the neuro-curious to seasoned ADHDers will find value in my work.
When my internet broke down near the end of August, inadvertently giving me an extra week to focus on Glimmer, this additional time ended up making for what I feel is a much more solid article than I might have published otherwise. As an experiment, I followed the same pattern for the deep-dive on Juggernaut —with similar results.
Plus, there are many more things I want to learn, write about, and share with you! Maybe I'm just a slow writer, but they have been tough to cram in between all the work that goes into my series articles. My "Drafts and Ideas" folder is growing quite rapidly and I'd like to start getting some of these pieces past the outline stage and in front of your precious eyeballs.
For clarity, this change simply creates a more realistic "deadline" for me for the regular series posts. It is likely that I will post more often than every-other-week, but that is no longer an expectation I will have set explicitly.
Social Media Experiment
Another experiment I ran over the past month was to stop posting on social media. Since the built-in analytics on my website are quite modest by design, I wanted to see how much would change if I stopped actively promoting new posts.
So I stopped linking to new posts from Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn for the month.
Over that interval I observed an ~80% decrease in the average rate of followers gained per week.
It's important to note than many other variables exist in September that could affect this, so I'm taking the numbers with more than a grain of salt. Statistics and analytics aren't something I generally concern myself with —I'm only really here because I want to be. But I was curious whether the effort I was putting into creating interesting visuals and click-inviting witticisms was worthwhile.
The next phase of this experiment will be to increase my activity on social media again and see if the numbers come back up.
In the end, I'd love for this work to help as many people as possible, so as long as I have the time and energy to promote that goal on multiple platforms, I will.
In the Garden
Tending to the systems where I cultivate focus and productivity with mindful intention.
Watering (What's Working)
Weekly Budget Meetings
Something I started last month between my spouse and I, and I think it's still going well. They're less rigid already than they were at the start, but are still working as a way to keep us accountable to and on the same page with one another when it comes to finances.
After the anxiety and burnout spiral I had in August, having this shared ritual has been unexpectedly grounding. It's transforming a former anxiety trigger into a way to connect, and that (evidently) makes a big difference!
Hobonichi Cousin
I've got a full month in the Hobonichi Cousin at this point and I already love flicking through it. Bible-thin pages fluffed and crinkly with meeting notes, quotes from books, friends, and YouTube videos, hopes, dreams, brain dumps, random thoughts, even a few literal tears.
Moving back into an A5 size has been the right call. I've been filling most of the daily pages (except the weekend days) then using the yearly view up front as an index —and it's working so well.
Processing (Sort Of)
I've accidentally started taking a big chunk of one weekend day (whichever one has the least Other Stuff™️planned) to process, review, and generally putter around in and with my notes and notebooks.
It's already becoming something I really look forward to, especially in my current very self-anthropological headspace. So I'm going to start putting a tiny bit of intention in it, just enough to protect the time.
It's been very soothing for my brain to commune with my work, research, and thoughts in an unstructured way, and I'm interested to see what may come out of protecting this ritual.
A Clean Office
We moved into this house a year and a half ago and —since I hadn't taken the time at all since then to organize it— my office closet had reached such an unwieldy state that it was becoming dangerous. You'd be surprised just how much a container stuffed with yarn can weigh, and there are several of them in there, among other things.
In addition to this, my office was becoming cluttery enough that it was distracting me during blocks of time I had set aside to focus.
So, since I certainly don't need more things keeping me from focusing, a couple of weeks ago I took an entire afternoon (and 2/3 of the audiobook for Michael Schur's "How to Be Perfect") to empty it, organize it, and reorganize my office while I was at it. And boy, does that feel better.
Next I'll be putting up some string lights. Who doesn't love string lights?
Co-Working in Discord
Since launching my lil Discord server (and admittedly long before that) I've been using the voice chat for co-working most days. Sometimes it's just me, but I'm often joined by at least one of my partners in crime from the PKM collective, Ethan and Ashley.
When I'm working on a piece like this I'll run a sprint with a word-count, or just a regular timer so we remember to check-in at regular intervals, and it's great!
The channel I use the most has voice permissions disabled, which felt kind of odd at first if I'm being honest, but it's been nice to explicitly opt-out of the potential to be distracted by a voice-chat when I need to focus while also leveraging the grounding forces of body-doubling.
Having someone else present —even silently— seems to help reduce my startup resistance. On mornings when I have a tough time getting into a flow, knowing a friend might pop into the channel to keep me company makes me more likely to just jump in, put on some music, and get to work.
Weeding (What's Not Working)
Digital Workflow
The workflow I was using in Zotero (a research reference manager) started to break down when the plugin I was using to write my notes stopped syncing properly —unfortunately this resurfaced the reason I had started writing in Zotero in the first place.
About that same time I learned that Remnote (a spaced-repetition app I used in college) has a web-clipper that allows you to take notes from, and save, webpages as references. So the timing of that discovery couldn't have been more perfect!
Planting (What's Changing)
Moving both research and writing into Remnote eliminated *three * other apps I was using for that workflow. Having everything in a single local-first place feels good so far!
The Workbench
Chris Bailey's "Overcoming Procrastination" Course
If you've been around for a while you know I love Chris Bailey, who you may know as The-How-To-Calm-Your-Mind-Guy because that's the book of his that I talk about most. So, when the opportunity to take his new course, aptly named "Overcoming Procrastination," presented itself, you better believe I hopped on that train.
The "practical, tactical" strategies and frameworks that Chris comes up with aren't always new , per sé — but he has a way of distilling conceptual information into accessible action that I truly admire. I'm no longer sure how I stumbled across his work, but I've been a fan since before I was diagnosed with ADHD. So it feels especially important that his strategies are the ones that have stuck; even throughout the process of both educating myself about the neuroscience of ADHD, and experimenting to find what works.
I'm six sections in and already I can't wait to experiment with what I've learned and share my findings with you!
Setting Intentions for the Year
As I mentioned in my August Review, the final quarter of the year has always been an introspective time for me. The arrival of Autumn and my birthday coincide with planner season and other temporal markers to make this a major "reflect and reset" moment for me.
This year has been significant in ways that are more difficult to quantify than usual. Plus, the path forward isn't clearly marked, so I'm taking some additional time to consider what I want my future to look like and carve out some milestones with intention.
Detailing My Planning and PKM System
Part of the process of setting goals and intentions is evaluating the precious systems that I use to pursue and track them. I've been experimenting with how to share my planning and personal knowledge management systems with you, a tricky thing since —while not very complex— they are largely analog, and I think I've finally found something workable.
Once my 2026 setup is finalized I'll put together some photos and diagrams with narrative explanation, showing the messiness alongside the method as usual —and hopefully a quick-start guide that'll be easy to follow!
Current Hyperfocus
Compendia (Compendiums? Why does the right way seem wrong?)
Recently, since I watch a fair amount of self-education and knowledge management content on YouTube, I found myself watching a 20 minute video on Compendia (and somehow managed to keep from being completely derailed by a distractingly old-timey moustache). The video explains why they're different from commonplace books, and how to create one of your own.
This concept was immediately fascinating not only because of the "why not" of it all but also because it made me realize I'm already building a compendium.
By Parker Settecase's current definition, a compendium is " a collection of information and analysis about a body of knowledge, usually meant to be comprehensive in scope and systematically presented."
While it seems to combine elements from synonymic terms like encyclopedia, anthology, and collection into a somewhat personal iteration, this definition effectively makes The Attentive Archive a compendium. An idea that gives me both boundless joy and a renewed sense of purpose to make it fit the definition.
I'm currently in the process of putting all of the Cornerstones, League Members, Wards, and Counterspells (as well as their corresponding references) onto index cards so I can map their relationships and uses in more detail before copying them into a more systematically presented notebook form. (A physical grimoire!)
This has already resulted in more uses for both the index card and compendium modes of storing and sharing information. I'm still developing these ideas and will share more when they're ready to be useful —but I'm genuinely excited about where it could go!
Focus for October
Again, seeing what's on my plate and how many things are currently working well(!) I'm going to skip having a PACT for this month as well. The important thing for me in the next couple of weeks will be to get my intentions set up and then broken down into actions.
After the intensity of the summer this steadier season is feeling like a gift. I'm using it to build stronger foundations, and that's exactly what I need right now.
✂️ TL;DR
Schedule Update: Bi-weekly posts for The League series; social media does impact reach (~80% difference).
What's Working: Weekly budget meetings, Hobonichi Cousin, weekend processing, clean office, Discord co-working.
What's Changing: Consolidated into Remnote, taking Chris Bailey's course, building a compendium, setting 2026 intentions.
October Focus: No PACT —building foundations and breaking down intentions into actions.