Bad tools > Perfect processes

_{Day 212/100}

Hey—It's Tim. 

Tech sins I keep committing to ship

Spreadsheet as a CRM

I used to keep a Google Spreadsheet called Pipeline with a ✅ column and four shades of yellow.
If a row turns the “good yellow,” I DM them. That’s the follow-up system.

This is in Coda now. As a kanban. It’s better. Not perfect. But better.

Google Docs as an image hub

I paste screenshots into a Doc, right-click, “Copy image address,” and use that link in a newsletter.
Half the time Google swaps the URL and breaks a past issue. I still do it when I’m rushing.

I’m currently moving this to a desktop version. Logitech dropped an update for my mouse that makes the windows screenshot tool much more powerful.
I would like to own my screenshots.

Not pay $4/month just to have access to them.

Photoshop as a bulk variant factory

I build a 6000×6000 canvas, stack 30 artboards, toggle layer eyeballs, and export PNGs by hand.
Filenames typed in the save dialog like it’s 2008. Thirty ads in fifteen minutes. Good times.

ChatGPT as a pretend terminal

I “run” cURL in the chat, ask it to simulate the JSON, and write docs/screens around the fake output.
No environment, no keys, but the product page ships and the demo looks alive.

Figma as a research warehouse

I carpet-bomb a page with 80 competitor screenshots, tag with sticky notes, and draw red arrows like a coach.
Search is me on my tablet zooming and squinting. It’s not a repo; it’s a crime scene wall.

It works. For now. As all of these do.

Scrappy in practice.

—

I know these are wrong.
They also get the draft over the line when budget, time, or energy are at zero.

Ship the thing that moves the story forward today.
Clean the crime scene when the lights come back on.

See you tomorrow.

✌️ Tim "YOLO to Prod" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. Reply with your worst “ship-it” sin for my post, I Write Sins, Not Dependencies - if I publish yours, you get credit + a backlink (or anonymity if you’d rather).

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