Do the write thing

I have had a few 1:1 meetings in the past month where somebody said “I was going to ask a question, but I forgot what it was.” I know I have done that plenty of times in the past. During the first year of writing on my blog, I also had a lot of neat ideas for posts that vanished into this very same gray fog of forgetfulness.

I have made a habit of sending people Slack messages for things I wish to discuss for upcoming meetings. I also have Post-Its, a copy of Notepad open, and sometimes I will Slack myself a reminder.

Google has trained us to be very poor at remembering things by making everything searchable at a button press. I believe that is related to the problem of forgetfulness, but I am sure someone who is more science-ey will know the truth of that statement. Maybe it is easy to point at Google the same way we point at the dog when the room starts smelling bad, and we do not want to say “something-something-old-age”.

In any event, this week’s post is short, simple, and sweet. If you have an important thought, make sure to transcribe it somewhere. Sheets of paper are cheap, and a notes.txt file on your computer is cheaper. You can always Slack yourself reminders, and in the event that you are meticulous and organized, maybe you have a personal Trello board.

Send yourself a slack. Write down your notes on a piece of paper. Save it in Notepad.exe.

My prediction is that you will forget to do this 2.5 times on average after reading this post before developing this essential skill.

If not, then now is a good time to go to my Clearly-Labeled-Amazon-Affiliate-Link and buy far too many Post-It notes.

This is probably the most TokTok-able advice you will ever get from me. I will continue to put my thinkiness into words instead of videos as long as possible. See you all next week.