Newsletter issue from three notes
🧭HOW IT WORKS
How an issue of Slack in the System gets drafted since January. About 900 words, one idea.
- Find three permanent notes that already agree. Linked to each other, each one a claim. If I have to persuade them to agree, they are not the three.
- Put them in order. Usually the plainest claim first and the one that costs something last.
- Find the opening story. One thing that happened at work, names removed. It goes first on the page, although I find it third.
- Write the join. The draft is mostly the sentences between the notes. The notes themselves are already written.
- End on one question. A real one, that I do not know the answer to.
Use when: it is Sunday and an issue is due on Thursday week.
If there is no cluster of three: the fortnight's job is to write the missing note. The issue after that will be easy.
It fell out of processing 📰 Evergreen notes on 11 January: if notes are small and their titles are claims, an issue does not start from nothing. The claim is 💎 An issue is three notes that already agree with each other. First tried on issue 32.
It hands over to Newsletter send checklist, which gets the draft out of the house.
When not to use it
- When something has just happened. Issue 34 was the story of the slip, written a week late and in one go. Three calm notes would have got in its way.
- When the three notes agree too well. Then the issue is a summary, and Noor Haddad's question comes back as and?
- For anything longer. The guest essay in September needed an argument that turns. Three notes that agree do not turn.
Where I use it: every ordinary issue in 📂 Slack in the System - 2025 issues. The clearest case is 📝 Issue 42 - Your backlog is a stock, not a list.