Why This Entrepreneurial Journalist Doesn’t Fear AI

I'm fascinated with how the smartest people in the world get their work done. We're inundated with platitudes about productivity, but rarely do we get to see the nitty-gritty details of a person's daily routine. That's what Superorganizers is about: diving into the details, to see all of the little habits that make up a great work day and a great life. Artificial intelligence has changed what it means to be productive and efficient at work, so we decided to revisit some of our most poignant interviews to understand how their routines might have changed in the era of large language models. Yesterday, we spoke to designer Marie Poulin about Notion, AI, and ADHD. Today, we’re back with entrepreneurial journalist Polina Pompliano, author of the interview newsletter The Profile.—Dan Shipper

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In 2020, Dan spoke to Polina Pompliano about how she stays sufficiently organized in order to write her newsletter, The Profile, for which she interviews the most interesting people in the world. And organization is key because she reads 1.8 million words every year just to inform her writing.

When we first spoke to Polina, she had recently left a job at Fortune to pursue The Profile full-time, betting that her obsession with understanding people would be captivating and resonant enough for her readers. She relied on a link-filled “master doc” system on Google Docs with categories like “People to Know” and “Companies to Watch” that kept everything related to her work neat and tidy.

In the years since, Pompliano got married and had two kids—all while seeing through her goal of turning The Profile into a full-time enterprise with tens of thousands of subscribers.

We caught up with Polina to explore how her life and work has changed, what she thinks about AI’s role in writing, and why she believes imperfection might be journalism’s greatest asset.

How has your “master doc” system evolved since we spoke?

I still have a master document, but I use Notion instead of Google Docs. I create a new page for the upcoming Sunday newsletter and work on it during the week.

What’s changed about your life since we talked and how has that impacted your work?