Simplify

I'm bad at both digital simplification and real life simplification, but digital is definitely more fun. What ways have you been able to simplify your life without too much effort?

• Buttondown
• Patreon
• My blog

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:14 Newsletter Platform Friction
01:21 Ghost Versus Buttondown
02:02 Cutting Digital Clutter
02:37 Threads and Social Tradeoffs
03:09 Simplify Online Choices
03:34 Garage Purge Progress
04:08 Listener Question and Wrap Up

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• Lynn
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• Abbey Fisher
• eileen smee
• 3 Guys 3 Questions

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Creators and Guests

Host

Chris

I edit podcasts so you don't have to. I live in Saskatchewan so you don't have to?

What is Daily(ish)?

Challenging myself to record a podcast episode a day for my 50th year on this planet.

Chris: Hello, and welcome to
Dailyish for August 20th, 2026.

I'm recording an episode every day
for this, my 50th year on the planet.

One of the themes I've been feeling
compelled to do for this year

is to simplify my digital life.

I have multiple newsletters, podcasts,
blogs type things, and I start them

under the guise that I'm just messing
around with cool tech and software and

trying something new, but then they
become a bit of a burden to either

maintain or a decision tree that has
to happen in order to decide where

I might write or post something.

Earlier this year, I switched my weekly
newsletter writing app from Buttondown,

which I loved, to using Patreon's
built-in newsletter writings thing, and

I actually hate it I did this because
Patreon is where I have some support

from folks who supported me over the
years in various online things I've

been doing, and they added a feature
to be able to send out a newsletter,

so it felt like a simple way to merge
those things and make life simpler.

But Something about the simplicity of
Buttondown to just write and send emails

has been lost in the transition for me.

I'm sure there's lots of folks who
love and use Patreon, no problem.

But Patreon has an underlying goal of
getting people to subscribe and pay you

to support you, which is kind of counter
to why I was writing a newsletter.

And so I realized too late that
what I should be doing is maybe

using Ghost, the platform I already
use for my blog at chrishands.com

to send out a weekly newsletter.

But that's not looking like it'll work
very well unless I pay them more to

allow me to unlock a feature that I need
in order to just send out a newsletter.

When I was considering it before,
using Ghost, that is, it felt like

it was too complicated and awkward
to send a newsletter from the

same place that I blogged from.

And I thought I figured out a solution,
but like I said, kind of have to

pay to get that working properly.

A really nice side effect of that would
be that my newsletter and my blog all

exist on one place, and the archives
of all that are all in the same place.

Simple.

So that's still under construction.

But I have a feeling that if I want
to stay cheap, which I do, that's more

important than simple, I will probably
end up back on Buttondown just because it

made it super easy to write and send out
a newsletter I've also started deleting

or archiving old podcasts that I started,
and some of them had three episodes of,

or 10, or five episodes over two years,
those kinds of things I'd really love

to be able to ditch Facebook connected
accounts like Instagram and Facebook

in particular, maybe even Threads, just
because they're all in- so intertwined and

I don't really like giving Facebook/Meta
more of my time and energy and content.

I do find Threads to be a nice, funny,
light social media app that has just

enough of an algorithm to surface
interesting content as well as people to

follow and be able to talk about things
like TV shows or sports events or world

news that isn't just angry yelling at
each other in a way that Blue Sky and

Mastodon are a little more slower and
more tech-driven, which is a great water

cooler area for me in my work, but not
always as fun for talking about a new

episode of "Slow Horses," let's say.

I was talking about this with my wife
the other day and said how most people

in real life around us don't spend time
worrying about where and how they're

going to publish and share things online.

They probably just open Facebook or
open Instagram, and that's what they do.

And that's kind of what I want to
simplify my life a little bit about,

because in this day and age, there's
just way too many choices, especially

for nerds like me, and everything gets
scattered everywhere, and that's a lot of

technical debt that I don't need to carry.

And I'm sure my family's hope is that
the digital simplification would extend

to real-life simplification and purging.

But deleting stuff from the garage
is a little more difficult than

deleting a folder on the computer.

Although we have almost kind of finished
a summer project that was supposed to be

a July project and now is almost finished
at the end of August of purging, cleaning,

putting up shelving in the garage, And
it does feel good to have space on the

floor for things like bikes or just
walking around the garage to get things

and shelves that my son and I put up

I don't plan to have a question every
episode for listeners, but if I did

have one for you, listener, this time
is what ways have you found that are

lowest effort for greatest reward in
areas of simplifying your life that

are practical and easier to maintain?

We all have goals of quickly
cleaning out the garage, and

some of us probably do that.

But for the rest of us, what are
some ways that you are simplifying

life or have simplified your life and
got the greatest reward out of that?

I'm still not sure how I'm gonna
solicit feedback, but you can

email me [e-mail]

for now and let me know your
thoughts on the podcast or anything

else you'd like me to talk about.

Thanks for listening.

Have a great day.

Bye.