I built the system I couldn’t find anywhere else

I’m Marty. I used to start every morning already behind.

Three calendars that never agreed with each other. A mental list a mile long that I carried into bed every night. Meals decided at 5:40 p.m. in front of an open fridge. And prayer — the thing I said mattered most — waiting somewhere at the bottom of the pile for a quiet moment that never came.

For a long time I thought the problem was me. Not enough discipline. So I tried the apps, the color-coded systems, the five-a.m. routines other people seemed to make look easy. Most of them lasted about eleven days.

I come by systems honestly. In 2005 I founded PC Network LLC, and for nearly twenty years I was the person people called when the network went down or the data vanished. I liked untangling knots that left everyone else frustrated. But a pattern kept showing up: my clients didn’t only need their computers fixed. They needed their weeks fixed. The technology wasn’t the problem. The chaos around it was.

Alongside that: thirty-some years leading retreats, thirty-six years married, five kids now grown. If those decades taught me anything, it’s that simple, dependable systems aren’t a luxury. On a hard week they’re survival.

So I stopped looking for a system that would make me a different person, and started building ones that fit the life I actually had. Loud kitchen. Real schedule. Faith at the center, not in the margins. Every layout gets the same precision I used to save for enterprise servers — then gets stress-tested by an actual household.

When I shared the first planners with friends at the parish, they asked for copies. Then their friends did. So here we are.

What I believe

• Progress over perfection. A planner with three blank days in it is still working. Open it again tomorrow.
• Simple systems change everything. The best system is the boring one you’ll actually use on a hard Tuesday.
• Faith belongs on the same page as the grocery list. Not squeezed into the leftovers of your day.
• You’re not failing. You just need better tools. There’s a real difference, and it matters.
• Organization isn’t the point. It’s what organization protects — dinner without screens, time to pray, being present with the people right in front of you.

What the systems are actually for

Every day now starts and ends with prayer.

Mornings are mine — quiet, before anything else in the day gets a vote. Nights are ours: my wife and I pray together, and my mom joins us by phone. Three of us, most nights, in two houses.

I didn’t white-knuckle my way into that. I got there because the rest of the day finally had somewhere to live besides my head. That’s the whole reason I build any of this. Order in the small things is what makes room for the things that matter.

About Nourish

Some of what’s here goes back further. Five babies came through our house, and I still remember my wife in those first weeks — awake at 3 a.m., healing, running on whatever she could eat standing up at the counter. I wanted to help and mostly didn’t know how. I’ve had a lot of years since to think about what would have actually made a difference.

That became Nourish: meal plans, freezer prep, trackers, and guides for new parents and for the people standing next to them wanting to be useful. It’s the help I wish I’d known how to give.

What I’m building

Cursus Brevis exists to help a thousand families and ministry leaders bring some order and peace to their days. Planners first. Then journals and binders you can hold. Someday a retreat, and a book I’ve been quietly writing in the margins for years.

When I’m not building tools or in the kitchen, it’s game nights with the family and putting on retreat weekends.

But all of it starts with one page, filled in on a Sunday afternoon, that makes Monday feel possible.

Here’s to an organized life.
— Marty Lachat, Founder, Cursus Brevis