🧱 Minimum Viable Structure
The systems that work are the ones that move.
Over the last 15 years, I’ve experimented with more personal systems than I can count — physical, digital, hybrid, you name it.
At this point, I’ve accumulated layers of self-organization: real estate binders from 2010, Evernote notebooks from 2015, ePub archives from a dozen rabbit holes, and more Google Drive folders than I’d like to admit.
Most of these systems had one thing in common:
They started with structure. But only a few ever developed flow.
🔄 Flow is the Difference Between a System and a Storage Unit
At some point, I realized this principle — not all at once, but slowly, from years of buildup:
Too much structure too early = architecture without tenants.
You think, “I’m interested in real estate, forex, productivity, design…”
So you make a folder for each.
Maybe subfolders. Maybe even labels or tags.
All reasonable decisions.
But then… you actually use only one or two of them.
Or you go deep in one direction and barely touch the rest.
Or you generate 100+ new ePubs, read 2, and never file the others.
The result is a system that’s clean on paper, but disconnected from how you actually interact with your own curiosity and output.
💡 Enter: Minimum Viable Structure
MVS doesn’t mean “no structure.”
It means: Only the structure that actively supports movement.
It’s the difference between a:
- folder and a queue
- tag and a filter
- notebook and a pipeline
Here’s how it’s looked in my current system:
📥 My Email-as-Queue Flow (What Does Work)
I now send ideas, prompts, notes, and even full article drafts to a dedicated email inbox.
Then I:
- Use the unread state to mean “still in queue”
- Reply to myself with thoughts, progress, or
done - Once processed, I mark as read and archive
- Final outputs get moved to my portfolio site, where they live publicly
It’s a flow, not a warehouse.
And because it moves, I trust it.
It doesn’t need extra structure — because nothing sits still long enough to require it.
Update: I have began creating labels/folders. I did this because the inbox was getting to be several pages long. The queue still acts as is, but it was getting cluttered with stuff that I dont intend to act on for many months, years or even decades. Examples: Ideas specific to certain CRUD apps, ideas for youtube shorts, for comedic characters, CS/SWE shirt design ideas, portfolio UI/UX improvements. These items are still left unread, but they now dont show up in the unread count in the inbox. You could say that instead of being in the main queue, they have been redirected to specific queues.
A few important details:
- I'm not creating these labels pre-maturely, I'll wait until there are a few items that naturally fit into a grouping/category,. and only then create the label.
- I'm actually not getting super specific (another form of pre-mature structure). I literally have one category called: CRUD Apps... I dont have separate labels for mixbase, insights mesh, backstory, etc., the emails subject line tell me which crud app it's associated with
🧱 MVS in Practice
Here’s how Minimum Viable Structure shows up:
| Symptom | Traditional System | MVS Approach |
|---|---|---|
| I have lots of ideas | Categorize them into folders by topic | Dump them in a single inbox, sort only when needed |
| I read 1 out of 100 ePubs | Organize all 100 into labeled folders | Let unread ones pile up in New, only move what I finish |
| I revisit some ideas often | Pre-label everything with topics | Let usage reveal what needs a name |
| My system feels heavy | Add tags, categories, dashboards | Strip down to just a queue + archive |
🧠 What This All Comes Down To
Structure should serve the work, not replace it.
- Don’t design your system around everything you might do.
- Build for what’s already in motion.
- Add layers only when the friction of not having them exceeds the cost of managing them.
Because in the end, the best systems aren’t the most organized —
They’re the ones you still use 6 months from now without thinking about them.