Contrary to what you may hear from productivity gurus — it's not too late to prepare for 2026.

In fact, if you're behind, welcome to the club. You're human.

2025 was relentless. Culturally, politically, technologically — if you tried to keep up with AI on top of everything else (like adulting), you probably felt inundated, overwhelmed, and exhilarated all at once. That's the accurate response to an impossible information environment.

To keep up is an exercise in stamina and surrender. So I've stopped asking "how do I keep up?" (Hint: You can't.) The question I'm sitting with instead: "How do I stay grounded while everything accelerates?"

My answer: an annual reset. But not of my productivity system — of my thinking ecosystem.

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A thinking ecosystem is different from a productivity system.

Productivity systems help you capture and execute. Thinking ecosystems help you orient — to synthesize, process, understand, and make meaning.

You can’t do things well (be prodcutive) unless you can think well. And thinking well is going to be a differentiator between who succeed and those who don’t in the age of AI.

My thinking ecosystem has three layers: analog (journals, morning pages), digital (Obsidian for deep thinking and synthesis, Notion for projects and external work), and AI (Claude and ChatGPT with my context loaded). Both analog and digital are thinking spaces — just different modes. One is slow, handwritten, embodied. The other lets me link, retrieve, and build on ideas over time.

But none of these layers matter if they're not calibrated to the person using them.

E.g. Me.

Which is why the reset starts somewhere deeper.

The foundation: Know yourself first.

Before I touch any system, I review my Codex Vitae — Latin for "book of life."

It's a living document that holds my values, priorities, what I'm working toward, and how I actually think. Not aspirationally. Actually. It includes things like: what drains me, what restores me, how I make decisions, what I'm prone to avoid, what I'm building toward this year.

Think of it as a user manual for yourself — one you update as you change. And yes, you can use AI to help generate one for yourself (or update it).

Why does this matter?

Because most productivity advice assumes you already know what you want and how you work. Or worse, that we all operate in the same way. You just need the right app, the right method, the right morning routine. But if you haven't clarified who you are right now, you optimize for something not personalized to you. You risk burn out from misalignment.

The Codex Vitae is a corrective. A reminder of who you actually are before you start optimizing for who you think you should be. It holds both truths — your starting point (your now) to where you have your sights and directionally guides you from there.

Everything downstream flows from this. My systems, my rituals, my tools — they only work because they're built for me, not for some generic "productive person."

Then: Reset the ecosystem to match.

Once I've reviewed and updated my Codex, I update my spaces:

Analog — I have 3 journals. One daily log for schedules and ad hoc notes, one “diary” for morning pages and free form writing (mostly to help me work out internal things), and one reading journal that captures notes from books, articles, and other media I’m consuming. I ask: Are these formats still serving how I think? Do I need to simplify, let something go? For instance, this year, I shifted from a condensed bullet journal to my current daily log set up because I wanted to not just capture what I needed to do, but also what I thought, felt, lived, etc.
Digital — I actually rely on two platforms for different purposes: I use Obsidian for thinking and synthesis (my library, my studio) and Notion for projects and collaboration for where the results of my thinking go external (my office). I clean, archive, and realign projects, tags, notes, etc. I’ll also store my updated codex vitae in both spaces to my current focus.
AI — I update my custom instructions, load my current Codex Vitae, check my integrations. So my tools know who they're working with now, not who I was six months ago.

Finally: Purge what's dead.

Delete/archive dormant digital projects, stale tasks, old journals I’ll never revisit. I’m literally Marie Kondo-ing analog and digital pages asking myself is it useful? Does it spark joy? If not, I hit “delete” or send it to the shredder.

There's truly something cathartic about this. A hot drink, good music, and twenty minutes of shredding to-do lists you no longer need. It's release and makes room for what's next.

The Takeaway

Productivity systems get all the oxygen. But no one talks about how to build a practice that helps you think — or how to keep it aligned with who you're becoming, especially set against the rapid pace of AI and information overwhelm.

I kept this at a higher altitude on purpose. There's more I could say about each layer — the analog/digital hybrid, how I structure Obsidian for synthesis, how I load context into AI, what actually goes in my Codex.

But I wanted to keep it here to show what an ecosystem might look like and what could inspire yours. If you want me to go deeper on any of these, let me know what you're curious about.

Remember, your setup won't look like mine. But the principle holds: know yourself first, then build spaces that match how you actually work.

Asking "what's the best system?" is the wrong question. The better one is: "what helps you think clearly?"

That's the human skill that matters now.

❝

Try out the Codex Vitae prompts — use it to start your own book of life.

Now I want to hear from you:
What does your thinking ecosystem look like — or what do you wish you had? Want to see more of my ecosystem? Hit reply or tag me on social (@ThinkwithV) to share.

My AI Experiments

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WIN (& FAIL): Claude Code for Non-Technical Uses

Confession: I’ve been spending way too much time rabbit holing Claude Code. I recently made a social post on it and it’s something I’m working on for a deeper newsletter, but hands down, Claude Code is standout winner of AI products in 2025.

Yes, even for non-tech folks, like me. Over the holidays I’ve downloaded MCPs to help me make my second brain in Obsidian more seamless, written scripts to automate repetitive tasks on my computer, learned how to not be afraid of the terminal and can tell you the difference between a CLI and an IDE. And I haven’t even built an app on it yet.

It’s easy to get lost in the your new capabilities and super powers, but for if you’re into creating more capacity to think better or use AI in ways to support your cognition, this tool will change your AI game.

Q for The Readers: Short or Long?

Time is our finite resource. And while I appreciate you hearing me out some on this journey to think with AI and not like AI, I’m curious what the right amount of information is.

Do you prefer newsletters like these with multiple sections and categories? One long piece? Or a bunch of short updates?

I’m in the early stages of this whole newsletter thing, so am open to feedback in terms of what would be helpful you in terms of: 1) Length, 2) Format, and even 3) Topics.