Choosing tools Ranjani, May 27, 2020June 7, 2025 Good friend and ex-colleague, Harish, once told me, “we’ll end up thinking in rows and columns when we open a spreadsheet”. He’s right. If you’re going to ideate on a spreadsheet, there is no other way to think. This is why it’s important to choose your tools wisely. Here’s how I approach some of my writing tools. If I have an idea for an essay — typically one with an argument that connects multiple films — I put stickie notes on my wall and organise my thoughts. If I have a single-point agenda — for a topic like ‘5 reasons why you should consider Kubernetes for your enterprise apps’ — I typically outline in a notebook. List the five reasons and what comes under it. If I am writing a straight-forward film review, I sit down at my computer and type everything that comes to mind. And then, I rearrange/rewrite to make it work. If I am writing long-form — though I don’t do as much as I’d like to — I set up a folder of sorts and keep adding information into it for weeks before I’m ready to organise them. When I’m making presentations, I open a blank Keynote file and title the slides to have a framework. Then, I design and write them as I go along. This applies to how I use Ulysses or iA Writer or Word or Google docs. Some clients don’t have Word and prefer Google Docs; So, I write there. This blog post itself is being written in Agenda, a note-taking app. I write for Twitter directly on Twitter, or build threads on TextEdit and copy-paste. To me, the tool I choose serves just one purpose: To clarify my thoughts and help me write a good story. So, I pick what works. Freelancing Writing
This is great :)People use excel sheets to store all forms of data because they believe it is the ONLY way to store date. It can extremely cumbersome to extract content from a table when each cell contains paragraphs of text. Often, a scrolling word doc with clear headers is good enough. Excel sheets are useful when each cell contains no more than a couple of words or numbers :)In my experience, one instance where an excel sheet is great is when it is used for restaurant menus. Copying and pasting an entire column independently without your cursor selecting unwanted cells is a major win for Excel 🙂 Reply
When it comes to writing, we need to approach it just like a chef would approach cooking at the kitchen table. That is – no one tool (ingredient/kitchen tool) can do everything. Every kind of activity needs a different tool. For ideating, Excel is the last tool to consider. If you know what you want, very clearly, then sticky notes are good. But if you have only a vague idea about the topic and want to see what else can be connected to a topic (to build it up), then more new and advanced tools like Obsidian/Roam Research fit the bill a lot. I use Obsidian and Notion a lot for my writing process. More because they help in connecting different ideas (taken in the form of notes, in the past) to build out a new idea/article. Reply