My Thoughts on List Making
My Thoughts on List Making
I get my best thinking done while I am driving in my car and in the early morning hours when I should be sleeping. A million things can pop into my head at these times. The issue is I can forget a thought as quickly as I have it, so I spend a crazy amount of time and brain energy remembering my thoughts. Do you do this? It can be so frustrating as I lie in bed, going over a list of thoughts, instead of sleeping, because inevitability I forget half of what pops into my head. ALWAYS!
Is it age?. . . . Maybe, a little. . . . . . . . But research shows that your brain can not determine the importance of what you are thinking about. So while some thoughts may be important, other unimportant thoughts are taking up space in your memory and squeezing out the good stuff. This is so me! I end up remembering to do a load of laundry but forgetting to buy my plane ticket for my upcoming vacation.
If you can relate to this, maybe you need to find a better way to get your thoughts out of your head and arranged them in an organized fashion that will work for you. What works for one person, may not work for others, so you need to find a personal system that works for you.
What have you tried?
Did any or part of it work?
Are you a visual person?
Are you paper-based or tech-friendly? or both?
These are some things to explore when looking for the right system for you.
Research shows that your brain can not determine the importance of what you are thinking about. Click To Tweet
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Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
I agree that getting the thoughts out of your head and in a form you can organize is key! What’s working for me is an app I can access from either my phone or my laptop. No matter where I am, if something pops into my head – important or otherwise – I can add it to my task list and know it won’t be forgotten. The downside is that if something doesn’t make it to the list for whatever reason, I can easily forget to do it.
Yes. I am also very forgetful. I need to get everything down as well. I use google tasks for most small things, but also use a paper list to prioritize my projects. This seems to be working for me now, but it’s always a work in progress.
I love writing things down. I tend to group the things I want to do and/or remember into categories – only because this is the way my brain works. I love that you mention different techniques work for different people. And, the same technique can work differently. My best suggestion is to make a brain dump. You can either write things down or record them as an audio file. As long as the ideas are captured – the method doesn’t matter.
Great idea for the brain dump. I remember a cousin of mine used to pull out a small recorder off his pocket to record what’s on his mind. Might be the time to start doing that. Now we have the recording app on the phone and should be easy and quick.
I’m noticing more and more that I can forget a thought as quickly as I have it. I don’t remember this happening in the past, but I’m sure it did. I think I also have a lot that I carry around in my head, so it just gets crowded in there and things get “bumped,” LOL!
I try and capture as much as I can in my planner. I agree that it is hard to both have ideas and prioritize them at the same time. Capturing them is fantastic, but it is step one. It’s important for me to go back, look at what I’ve captured, and then prioritize my tasks so I actually take care of the most important things.
it looks like that we all have all these thoughts and ideas that we’re not capturing on time or tend to forget. I’m liking the idea of recording my voice so I can listen to it later, especially when I don’t have a planner handy.
Great post! I am both paper and tech-friendly, but I am trying to update my systems to be more tech-friendly. With all the tasks I do, from home management to small business support, I have a lot of balls juggling in the air. I created daily planner sheets in Excel for recurring activities I do on certain days. Then, I set up my calendar to print each day on a 5×7 size sheet to match my Excel file. I then attach both to my disc planner and voila, I have a one-day planner with both digital calendars with unique appointments on them and recurring to-dos on the other page. It works pretty well.
That’s great and I’m glad it’s working for you the way you have it set up.
I am a huge believer in lists. I have a standard list of things I need to do every week in a word document in my computer. It’s sort of like one of those master grocery lists. Each Sunday evening, I pull up that list and add to it things that need to get done in the coming week and even beyond – I put the “in beyond” items on the bottom of the list. Then I print off the top part of the list – leaving off the “in beyond” and mark items off as I go. Things to do that are not routine tasks get put into my desktop calendar. All items that are on my paper calendar are also added to my desktop calendar for the upcoming week.
When I am away from home and think of something that got missed, I can pull up the google calendar on my phone and add it.
This is a great idea the way you have it sorted. Otherwise I’m sure things will get lost and forgotten.
Thanks for sharing the way you do your list.
I have a sharp episodic memory, finding it easy to recall things that have already happened, but I think the more we have in our brains, the harder it is to “remember to remember” (prospective memory) all the future-based things we have to do. I make lists for everything, except (usually) grocery shopping unless there’s something that’s absolutely essential and can’t afford to be forgotten. Otherwise, I amble through the store and let the aisles prompt me.
But I do have task lists, thank you note lists, packing lists, stressor lists (because if I write down what’s worrying me, I can see it’s not all that much, it just seemed like a lot), etc. I’ve learned that with the exception of (often-reused) packing lists, digital lists don’t work for me. There’s a method to how I write things on a list, all-capping the vital things and choosing just the right verb, and putting things in a particular order, and somehow handwriting it makes it stick so well in my head that I rarely have to look at the list. But typing? It’s forgotten a minute after I put it down.
I definitely believe in the power of lists!
What might work for one, may not work for another. We all have our different ways of tracking and making our list of ideas and tasks that we need to do and when we need to do them. I love all these different ideas.
I am a list-maker!!! And I have found that my lists are only effective if I write them down. If I try to make a digital list, I ignore it after I create it. I’m looking into a digital system that integrates with my calendar on my phone because I do actually reference my calendar on my phone, and that is working. But you are right, you have to find what works for you.
Writing down is not bad at all. But sometimes if I do so and I leave the house without them, I may forget what I need if they’re not on my phone in one of my labeled apps. I hope you find the app that works for you.
This is so great! I’m finding that I’m only starting how to make to do lists for me now!
It’s a game changer!