I spent the last three years watching creators, writers, and solopreneurs get completely overwhelmed by their publishing tools.
Not by the work itself—but by the tools.
One person would tell me they needed a dedicated image editor because their CMS didn't have one. Another would say their blogging platform couldn't handle scheduling, so they bought a separate tool. A third explained they were using four different apps just to publish a single blog post and track whether people actually read it.
The conversation usually went something like this:
"I want to write more, but setting up my publishing workflow takes longer than actually writing."
I heard this enough times to realize we had a real problem on our hands.
The Modern Creator's Tool Graveyard
Here's what a typical content publishing workflow looks like in 2025:
You open your CMS or blogging platform (WordPress, Ghost, Medium, Substack). You write your post. Now you need a featured image. So you jump to Canva or use Unsplash. You edit it slightly, resize it, optimize it. Back to your CMS to upload. You realize you want to schedule it for next Tuesday, so you check if your platform supports that. If not, another tool. You hit publish. Now you need to promote it on social media—that's another tab, another login, another tool to manage posting times.
A few days later, you want to know if anyone read it. Back to Google Analytics. Or maybe you have a dedicated analytics tool. Or maybe you're checking email subscriber metrics on Substack. Or tracking newsletter opens separately.
By the time your content is live, you've touched six different apps. You've logged in with four different passwords. You've context-switched so many times that you've forgotten what you were originally trying to say.
This is what I call tool fatigue.
Why Tool Complexity Kills Creativity
There's a psychological cost to context-switching that most productivity articles gloss over.
Every time you move between tools, you lose mental momentum. The creative energy you had while writing gets diluted. You start thinking about how to publish instead of what to publish. And worse—you start making decisions based on what's easiest in your tool stack, not what's best for your audience.
I've met writers who stopped publishing weekly because their workflow was too complex. Not because they ran out of ideas. Not because they were busy. But because the friction of the publishing process itself became demotivating.
The irony? All these tools promise to save time. And individually, they might. But together, they create a system that's harder to maintain than it is to actually create.
The All-in-One vs. The Specialist Debate
The obvious counterargument is that all-in-one platforms exist for exactly this reason. Substack combines writing and email distribution. Medium handles hosting, analytics, and monetization. WordPress plugins promise to cover everything.
And they're not wrong—theoretically.
The problem is that all-in-one platforms often do everything adequately and nothing brilliantly. They're built to serve the widest possible audience, which means they make compromises. Your analytics might be basic. Your email templates might feel generic. Your publishing experience might be fine, but not delightful.
On the flip side, specialized tools are really good at one thing. Canva is genuinely great at making images. Google Analytics is incredibly powerful for data. But that specialization comes with friction—you have to learn each tool's way of doing things, manage multiple logins, and integrate everything yourself.
There's a third path, though: choosing tools that do a few things really well instead of everything adequately. It's about being intentional about which features matter most.
What Actually Matters for Publishing
When I started building Jottings, I asked myself a simple question: What's the minimum viable feature set for someone who wants to publish consistently?
The answer was smaller than I expected:
A place to write—that's it. Just writing. Nothing fancy. Plain text, markdown, whatever feels natural.
Basic formatting—links, bold, headers. Not fancy styling. Not color pickers. Just what you need to make writing clear.
Publishing to the internet—your content should go live immediately and look good. No friction.
The ability to add images—and have them show up properly without needing a separate image editor.
A way for people to find your content—not a recommendation algorithm, but standard SEO things like RSS feeds, sitemaps, Open Graph tags.
That's it.
What we didn't include:
- Built-in email distribution (use a dedicated newsletter tool if you want that)
- Social media scheduling (use Buffer or Later)
- Advanced analytics dashboards (use Plausible or Google Analytics)
- Drag-and-drop page builders (we kept things simple and fast)
This isn't because these features are bad. It's because they're not core to publishing. They're periphery. And when you try to include everything, you dilute the core experience.
The Creativity Equation
Here's what I've learned: Fewer choices lead to more consistency.
This sounds counterintuitive, but it's true. When you have unlimited customization options, you spend mental energy on styling instead of writing. When you have fifty publishing features, you're tempted to use them all. When you have built-in email, social, and analytics, you're managing three platforms instead of one.
The people who publish most regularly aren't using the most sophisticated tools. They're using the simplest ones that actually get out of their way.
I've watched bloggers write more consistently since moving to Jottings not because Jottings is revolutionary—it's not. But because they spend thirty seconds publishing instead of thirty minutes managing tools.
That time adds up. That momentum matters.
Choosing Your Tools Intentionally
If you're reading this and thinking about your own publishing workflow, here's what I'd suggest:
Start with one question: What do I actually need to publish?
Not what sounds impressive. Not what everyone else is using. Not what might be useful someday. What do you actually need, right now, to get your ideas online?
Build around that. Everything else is optional.
Your newsletter tool should feel invisible when you're not using it. Your analytics should answer your actual questions, not overwhelm you with dashboards. Your publishing platform should let you write and get out of the way.
And honestly? If you're choosing between three mediocre platforms and one really good one at publishing—just choose the one that's great at writing and publishing. That's where your time actually goes.
One More Thing
I built Jottings because I kept seeing the same pattern: talented creators stuck in tool hell, publishing less because the work of publishing became harder than the work of creating.
If your publishing workflow feels complicated, it's not your fault. The industry has built it that way. But you don't have to accept it.
You can choose simplicity. And honestly? Your readers won't care that you're using fewer tools. They'll just notice you're publishing more consistently.
Try Jottings free. No credit card, no limits. See if a simpler approach works for you.