LENS: A Practical Guide to Building a System That Actually Supports Decisions

In the previous article, I described how my productivity system gradually evolved into what I now call LENS — a shift away from capturing everything and toward staying clear on priorities, decisions, and next steps.

This article picks up from there.

Image by the author created in cooperation with MS Copilot

Instead of focusing on the idea behind LENS, the goal here is to show how it works in practice. Not as a rigid framework, but as a set of habits and structures that make everyday work a bit less noisy and a bit more understandable.

If there is one thought that carries over from the first piece, it’s this:

You don’t build value by storing more information.
You build value by selecting the few things that still matter later.

Everything else follows from that.

What LENS Actually Does

LENS is not meant to capture your work. It’s meant to help you stay oriented within it.

Most of what happens during the day never becomes part of the system. Meetings happen, emails come and go, conversations move on. LENS only touches a small subset of that flow — the parts that continue to matter beyond the moment they appear.

In the first article, I described this as a shift from recall to clarity. In practice, that simply means asking one question more often:

Does this change how I think about a topic or how I’m likely to decide in the future?

If it doesn’t, it can safely pass. If it does, it becomes worth keeping.

A System That Stays Out of the Way

One thing I learned early on is that structure easily becomes a distraction. It’s tempting to design the system upfront — folders, tags, categories — and then spend time maintaining it.

LENS goes in the opposite direction.

The structure is intentionally simple and mostly stays in the background. There’s a small “home” view that acts as a personal landing page. It contains only what matters right now — a few active topics, open decisions, and links to slightly deeper context.

Below that sit a handful of Meta‑Pages. They don’t try to capture everything about a topic. They help you understand what’s currently going on. Over time, they become places you return to when you want to re‑orient yourself.

The actual knowledge lives one level deeper. It’s not organized into heavy hierarchies, but into small, self‑contained notes that can be linked together as needed.

There’s also a thin layer of weekly notes that provide context — not as long‑term knowledge, but as a way to remember when something happened.

That’s essentially the whole structure. It doesn’t try to do more than necessary.

Thinking in Small Pieces

The most noticeable difference when you start using LENS is the size of the notes.

Instead of writing long summaries, the system is built around small pieces of meaning. A decision, an observation, a risk, a constraint. Each note tries to capture one idea as clearly as possible, without trying to include everything that led to it.

This can feel incomplete at first. But over time, it becomes clear that completeness is not the goal. What matters is that each note stays understandable when you come back to it later.

It also makes it easier to connect ideas. Instead of navigating large blocks of text, you move between compact pieces that can be combined in different ways.

How Information Enters LENS

Most of the input still comes from the same places as before — meetings and emails. What changes is how little of that input actually makes it into the system.

During a meeting, I take notes in a fairly unstructured way. The important step comes afterwards. Instead of processing everything, I briefly check whether something in that discussion is likely to remain relevant beyond the immediate context.

If not, the notes stay where they are. If yes, I extract the core idea and turn it into a small knowledge note.

Emails follow a similar pattern, just with a bit more distance. Relevant messages are collected first and processed later in batches. That gap makes it easier to filter out what isn’t actually important.

In both cases, the goal is the same: not to preserve the original conversation, but to capture what it means.

Keeping the System Lightweight

The usefulness of LENS depends heavily on how selective it is.

If too much enters the system, the signal gets diluted quickly. That’s why I try to impose a few simple limits, more as guidelines than strict rules. On most days, only a handful of notes are created. Often fewer. Sometimes none.

When multiple inputs lead to the same conclusion, they don’t create multiple notes. And if something can comfortably live in Outlook as a reference, I leave it there instead of duplicating it.

These small constraints keep the system compact. They also make it easier to trust, because it never grows into something that needs constant maintenance.

Linking Instead of Sorting

Instead of spending time deciding where something belongs, LENS relies on linking.

When a new idea relates to an existing topic, I connect it directly. Over time, these links create a network that reflects how the topics themselves are connected.

Meta‑Pages act as entry points into this network. You don’t navigate a strict hierarchy; you move between related ideas depending on what you’re trying to understand at the moment.

This reduces a lot of upfront decisions. You don’t have to get the structure “right” every time. You can adjust it gradually as things evolve.

The Weekly Review: Where It Comes Together

Without some form of regular reflection, even a simple system like this would slowly lose its usefulness.

Once a week, I go through the material that has accumulated. I revisit the notes I created, add links where connections become visible, and take a step back to look at the bigger picture.

What actually mattered this week? Which topics are gaining weight? Where are decisions still open?

It’s a quiet, low‑key routine, but it’s where the system shifts from collecting notes to supporting thinking. It’s also what keeps the “home” view and the Meta‑Pages meaningful over time.

How to Get Started

The easiest way to start with something like LENS is not to build the full system.

Instead, pick one situation where you regularly lose track of information — for many people, that’s meetings. After a meeting, take a moment to write down one thing that might still matter next week. Don’t summarize the whole discussion. Just capture the one idea that feels relevant.

That alone is enough to change how you look at your notes.

From there, you can slowly introduce the other elements. A small place for your most important topics. A simple weekly check‑in. Some light linking between related ideas.

The system doesn’t need to be designed upfront. It tends to grow naturally once the underlying habit is in place.

Closing the Loop

In the first article, I described LENS as a way to stay clear on priorities, decisions, and next steps.

In practice, that clarity doesn’t come from better tools or more structure. It comes from being selective, keeping notes small, and revisiting them regularly.

LENS is simply a way to support that.

A Question for You

If you’ve read both pieces and this approach resonates with you:

Would you be interested in a deeper dive into specific parts of the system — for example Meta‑Pages, the weekly review, or how I structure individual notes?

I’m considering a few more focused follow‑ups that go into these aspects in more detail.