Build your own inspiration archive

Have inspiration available whenever you need it.

I stopped using social media last year. Haven’t been active on Instagram since the latest scandal. I’d already deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts long before that, because Mark and Elon creep me out. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to convince my contacts to switch to Signal, as long as the masses stay on WhatsApp, deleting that app just isn’t workable.

The reason I started an email newsletter now over three years ago, was because you consume newsletters differently than the fleeting nature of social media. Much more peace and attention.

Substack was the dream candidate to handle this email delivery, which I settled on after lots of trial and error. I’m still happy with that choice, but…

…recently we learned from the founders themselves that Substack is also a social media app.

That was already pretty clear after they started pushing the app much harder for reading newsletters, added Chat for direct communication with subscribers, and then Notes, which is obviously a Twitter clone. Hearing it straight from the source makes it a bit scary though, because I don’t like the direction this is heading. Eventually the big money will come knocking, and the cut from paid subscriptions won’t be enough to fuel the growth. Or how about ads before you can read an article…

The beauty of an email newsletter is that you can always read it; it’s either on your computer or stored in the cloud. Reading articles through an app or browser can cause quite a few problems. The post gets deleted, can’t be found anymore, or is now behind a paywall.

The newsletters sitting in your inbox remain available forever unless you delete them. Over time, this can become a truly valuable source of inspiration.

What I’ve done

First, I should mention that I still read most newsletters through the app. That’s because I also like reading the comments and contributing to discussions. Finding older newsletters when you want to read them again is difficult because you have to scroll through the pile of posts via the author.

Every newsletter arrives in my Gmail. Through filters, I have them all moved to the archive and give them a ‘Substack’ label. This way all emails are bundled and I can easily surface them through search queries. If the author decides to delete the original post or put it behind a paywall, I still have access through my own archive.

Recently, Perplexity launched its own browser, Comet, based on the Chrome browser. You barely notice any difference and you can import your bookmarks. The big advantage of this browser is that it has a built-in AI Assistant that you can easily use with a good prompt to search within newsletters and pick out exactly the one you need.

This Gmail system is just one part of how I save and retrieve inspiration. For quick notes, I use Google Keep with specific tags, and I have a handful of other tools for different purposes. But before I share my complete workflow: how do you save valuable content? Which newsletters do you follow that I shouldn’t miss? And have you found a smart way to organize photography inspiration?

Reply to this email or leave a comment. I’m going to collect your tips and in a future newsletter I’ll share my complete archiving system, including the tools that help me never lose anything.

And besides that… how nice is it when you have some time to click through your archive without any pressure? Just click on a random post, read it, and move on to the next one. Who knows what inspiration you’ll find there.

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That’s it for this newsletter.

Till next time,

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Article cover photo by C M on Unsplash