Hi, I'm Manuel.

I've spent the last ten years inside complex organisations, managing projects, building systems, and figuring out what actually makes people (including myself) more effective. Not in theory. In practice, with real constraints, real deadlines, and the kind of complexity that breaks most productivity advice within a week.

Along the way I got curious about something deeper: not just how to get things done, but how to think more clearly about what's worth doing in the first place.

That's what this blog is about.

Why I Write

I started this blog because I had consumed too much and created too little. Years of reading productivity books, testing PKM systems, and watching every Zettelkasten tutorial on YouTube. My notes were full. My head was not clear.

What I actually wanted was simple: peace of mind. A place where everything I learn and think about is easy to find again. A system that works quietly in the background instead of adding more noise.

But I kept seeing the same pattern, in myself and in others. People lose themselves in their systems. They spend hours documenting, linking, and optimising, but never come back to what they wrote. The system grows until it becomes a burden: too complex to use, too heavy to maintain, and with little value left.

That's where the idea for A Pragmatic Mind comes from. A system should help you act, not slow you down. It should make your life lighter, not heavier. And every article here is my attempt to figure out what that actually looks like in practice.

What You’ll Find Here

The site is organised around three ideas: thinking better, working better, and learning better.

In practice, that means articles like a deep dive into journaling as a thinking tool (not a wellness trend), a pragmatic look at what ten years with GTD actually taught me, a structured exploration of why we procrastinate and what the science says about it, or an honest book summary that tells you whether something is worth your time.

I'm particularly interested in the overlap between these areas. How journaling connects to better decision-making. Why a good note-taking system reduces mental clutter. What happens when you replace rigid goals with small experiments and see what sticks.

If something sounds useful, take it. If it doesn't, ignore it. That's the whole idea.

Let’s Connect

If you're working through similar questions, or if something here made you think, I'd like to hear from you. You can reach me by email or find me on LinkedIn.

I read every message.