Year’s End Reset

December is noisy: deadlines, shopping, family logistics. But once the concerts are played and the cookies are eaten, there’s a pocket of silence. Everyone has their out-of-office set until the first Monday of January anyway, so the world slows down. Those quiet days are my favorite time for a “Year’s End Reset.” It’s not a reinvention. It’s more like defragmenting a computer—clearing the buffer so future projects run smoothly.

For me, defragmenting isn’t only digital. It starts with the desk itself: clearing the piles of scores, notes, and printouts that gather during production season. Once the physical clutter is gone, I move on to the digital side. Every finished project gets archived so I can always retrieve it later, but it no longer clutters my daily workspace. That includes the auto-generated OmniFocus lists tied to each project, the email correspondence, invoices, and notes. Day to day, all active work lives in Dropbox—often alongside a shared production folder—but at year’s end I migrate everything relevant into long-term storage and unsubscribe from old folders. It’s also a chance to tweak my workflow: if something about a project setup bothered me during the year, this is when I adjust the system so the next round runs smoother.

OmniFocus

OmniFocus leads the charge. Every project begins with a long checklist that also includes archiving. Closing those tasks is my guarantee that nothing fell through the cracks. Once those boxes are ticked, I can trust the rest of the system to follow. During the year I’ll sometimes use an hour here and there to clear one project or tidy a few loose ends—but in December, it all gets the full review.

Obsidian → DEVONthink

Meeting notes, agreements, and scattered thoughts move out of Obsidian and into DEVONthink, where they join production sheets, invoices, and email threads. Everything in DEVONthink is archived by client, so I always have a clear record of what I’ve done for whom—whether it’s a single arrangement, a full production, or years of work together. Production sheets, emails, invoices, and notes all live under the client’s name, so when someone comes back years later asking for a revival, a new arrangement, or just a detail from an old session, I can pull it up instantly. DEVONthink isn’t just storage—it’s the long-term memory of my professional relationships. And because it’s basically Finder on steroids—indexed, searchable, cross-referenced—I never waste time hunting. Whether I’m looking for a production sheet from five years ago or the full correspondence around a project, it’s always there. That ease of retrieval is what makes the Year’s End Reset worth it: once the clutter is gone and the archive is solid, I know I can always find what I need—without it weighing down the present.

Dropbox

Completed projects go to long-term storage. Folders from abandoned collaborations are unsubscribed. I reset selective sync so every device carries only what it needs. The result: I never get surprised by “out of space” warnings in the middle of a job.

Google Sheets

Every production starts with its own sheet—whether I’m hired for a single song or sixty cues. That way I never lose track of the overall status. Who’s on the team, what the instrumentation is, which cues are finished, and how many minutes of music each ensemble has—it all lives there. At year’s end I make sure each sheet is complete, so the history of a project is just as clear as its music. Later, those sheets feed into my comprehensive project log—a complete record of everything I’ve done, from which I can pull relevant highlights whenever I need a CV or portfolio.

The winter reset has its own rhythm. Unlike summer, it comes at a moment when productions are usually wrapped, and the symbolism of a new year makes the process feel meaningful. Add good coffee, lights on the tree, and a Christmas soundtrack—Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra—and even technical cleanup feels like a ritual.

The reward is mental space. Clearing digital clutter is like leaving for vacation after answering every last email, versus leaving with a backlog waiting to ambush you on return. January is lighter when OmniFocus, Dropbox, and DEVONthink aren’t weighed down by ghosts of projects past. I start with fresh pencils, sharpened and ready. Only now, the pencils are my time blocks.

The Year’s End Reset isn’t about working more in January. It’s about giving Future Me a gift: a clean slate, a calendar with room to breathe, and the confidence that nothing slipped away.