A Content Queue That Doesn't Make You Hate Sundays

I tried Notion. Tried Trello. Tried a wall of sticky notes that my cat eventually ate.

Every one of them worked for about two weeks. Then I'd stop updating the board and the whole thing would rot.

Here's what actually stuck: a single text file.

The whole system

One file called content-queue.md. Four sections.

## This Week
- [ ] Write the cron tutorial (Tue)
- [ ] Publish to DEV (Wed)
- [ ] Share the link on Twitter (Thu)

## Next Week
- [ ] Draft: why I stopped using complex tools
- [ ] Record the quick video demo

## Ideas
- interview with another solo dev
- "what I learned from 100 bad posts"
- review of my filing system

## Done
- [x] Published automation basics post
- [x] Setup newsletter welcome sequence

Every Sunday I spend 15 minutes. Move things from Ideas into Next Week. Move things from This Week into Done. That's the whole process. No dashboard, no tags, not even a color code — just moving text around.

Why it works

A text file won't send you notifications. It won't have a downtime. And it definitely won't get a redesign that moves all your buttons around.

I keep mine in a Dropbox folder so it syncs between my laptop and phone. If I have an idea on the train, I open the file on my phone, type it in, and forget about it until Sunday. Half the time I forget what I wrote by then, which is fine. Sunday planning is also when I discover what past-me was thinking.

The cron reminder

I forget things constantly. So I set up this cron job:

0 10 * * 0 echo "Plan your week!" | mail -s "content queue" [e-mail]

Sunday at 10am. One line. If I ignore it, the email sits there and guilt-trips me until I do the planning. Works on macOS too. On Windows you'd use Task Scheduler. Same idea — a nag you control, not one the app controls.

Does it actually work?

Eight months in, and it's the only system I haven't abandoned. That's not a boast — it's genuinely surprising. I have a folder of abandoned Notion templates to prove it.

The template I use is bare bones. If you want the same thing with a few extras (monthly overviews, content pillar tracking), I put it here. Otherwise just open a file and start typing. The hard part isn't the format, it's showing up next Sunday and doing it again.

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🤖 AI-assisted draft. Content is my own original work and ideas.