A recent cry for advice thrown at Twitter: How do you look after your contacts? What do you use to record all the people and places that might be interested in working with you?

There were some interesting replies. It’s fascinating to hear how others manage their … actually no, never mind, I don’t care. I already have the perfect system. It’s a mess. It’s brilliant.

Since the dawn of time, I’ve kept all my contacts in a – pay attention now – very big spreadsheet. Just a massive grid of publishers and names and job titles and emails, notes (both salient and random) – assorted columns of schmooze-grist. There’s no great process behind it, simply a note of the last time I contacted each one so that I have an idea of when to contact them again. People at places with potential; everything I need to maintain a cycle of self-promotion. I’m Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, spinning back and forth through my all-powerful Rolodex.

Sure, I love making books look pretty, but there’s nothing quite so satisfying as delving into the tangle of the internet and teasing out something useful

This file is the backbone of my operation. It would be impenetrable to anyone else, but it makes sense to me. One of the benefits of working on your own is that you don’t have to worry about anyone else having to share your data or comprehend your methods. Slight problem: I’m not really on my own. I have to take into consideration the fleeting logic of me from five months ago, five weeks ago, five minutes ago. Maintaining a file over several years sometimes requires Bletchley Park-level scrutiny. Why is this contact ticked? And this one has a cross because…? Why are all Canadian publishers crossed out? What happened in 2014 to make me briefly introduce a star rating? Why are some of them green? But yeah, mostly it works. Mostly.

Every so often, having exhausted all other procrastinatory pursuits, I’ll go on the hunt for new potentials. This involves one of my favourite design-adjacent tasks: pretending to be a detective. Some publishers proudly display the information I’m looking for — here is the name and job title and email of the person that commissions designers, have a nice day — others not so much. But if you cross-reference enough social media profiles and design blog posts and LinkedIn connections, the clues are there. Sure, I love making books look pretty, but there’s nothing quite so satisfying as delving into the tangle of the internet and teasing out something useful. And into the big grid it goes.

The very thought of migrating my idiosyncratic sprawl of data makes me feel itchy. It wouldn’t work, it couldn’t. Things would fall off or get shuffled or burst into flame

It’s more than a simple address book; it serves other purposes too. Aside from all the deets (I’m so sorry), this file is also a handy place to collate little nuggets of positive feedback that would otherwise be buried. A box to peek inside when the dreaded imposter syndrome goblin comes to sit on my chest. Sometimes it’s nice to be buoyed by a simple, “lovely work”, or “beautiful, thanks for sending”, or “I’ll keep your details on file”. Don’t judge me by my wildly fluctuating praise threshold; a quantum of positive vibe can sometimes turn into a payday.

So, yes, thank you for the recommendations. There are clearly lots of wonderful apps, websites and such-likes designed specifically for big-c-big-m Contact Management, all built with functionality and efficiency and ‘client-onboarding workflows’ in mind. But they’re not for me. The very thought of migrating my idiosyncratic sprawl of data makes me feel itchy. It wouldn’t work, it couldn’t. Things would fall off or get shuffled or burst into flame. No, it’s too late for me. For better or worse, I’m fully committed to this ridiculous, barely intelligible spreadsheet. I will tend these fields forevermore, scrolling hither and thither Lemmonly.

Daniel Benneworth-Gray is a freelance designer based in York. See danielgray.com and @gray