How to Never Forget a Note To Yourself
Never forgetting your ideas, or a task you need to do is IMPOSSIBLE — Unless you have a system set up.
If you are anything like me, you get lots of inputs inserted into your brain every day. Those inputs sparks ideas, the things you need to get done, or something you want to read/learn about someday in the future.
The bad news:
#1 You are not going to remember everything. most of the thoughts that pop up, will be forgotten soon thereafter. Great ideas will forever be lost in the vast nothingness of forgotten potential brilliance.
#2 Remembering ideas and to-dos will take up precious brain space. That brain space should be used for doing great work, so don’t waste it. Your brain-computer has limited resources, don’t leave too many tabs open.
The good news:
It is possible to NEVER forget anything worth remembering. Without being stressed about it.
The Why
Setting up a system for capturing ideas, notes, and other random stuff I want to remember has been a gamechanger for me. I feel less stressed out and overwhelmed — because I don’t have tonnes of things roaming in my brain. I am always able to find the ideas I capture and retrieve them as needed. I can write down a thing I need to do at some point in the future, and let go of it.
Capturing ideas, notes, to-do’s, and stuff you want to (maybe) do/read/consume at some point in time, has two major benefits; You forget NOTHING and you don’t have to think about it again until you are actually doing the thing.
Recently my husband and I have talked about getting a naked spot in our hedge fixed. I researched beech hedges and got offers from a few landscape gardeners, but my husband and I decided to wait. All of the relevant info I came across in my research and the offers I got, was captured in my system. This way I can easily access the information when we want to do something about the hedge. I don’t have to remember anything. Moreover, I scheduled a notification to appear in my system in Spring. Spring is in all likelihood the time we need to reevaluate and start the project. By doing this, I can free up my brain AND I don't have to go through the process of research again. It feels freaking awesome to be this organized! WIN-WIN
An awesome side effect: I spend LESS time doom-scrolling Social Media after implementing my system. Every time I see something I would like to read or watch, I put the link into the system. When I have a spare moment, need to be inspired or whatever, I pull up my “want to consume” list and pick an article or video from it. That way the excess time, I would usually spend on Facebook/TikTok/Instagram, is spent on the content I genuinely want to consume.
The Brain Extension: A system
The system you set up can be as simple or as intricate as you want/need. The bare minimum is having a notebook and writing everything down, as you think of it. If you, like me, have tonnes of ideas, thoughts worth remembering, stuff you suddenly find out you need to get done, and articles and books you want to read, you need a more elaborate system. If you use a system that is too simple in proportion to your needs, the system will be overflowed. If I used a notebook for my entire system, I would fill it out in a matter of 10 days, and I would never be able to find the idea/task/article I was looking for.
Using an elaborate system does not need to be complicated. It’s basically only 2 elements. The first is capturing the thing, the second is storing it in a fashion that makes it easy for you to retrieve when needed.
How to set up and use the system:
I use ClickUp for my system. Every time I have something I need to remember, I write it down on the app on my phone or on my desktop. I have created an inbox where everything new gets stored. Once a week I go through every item in my inbox and put it in the right folder/list/task within ClickUp.
If you have many different kinds of notes/ideas etc. the biggest challenge is to figure out how to sort them. You need to have enough folders (or whatever you use) to be able to withhold all the different kinds of information. Having too many folders will make it more difficult to retrieve the information as it can reside in many different places.
Be careful not to make the system any more elaborate or any less elaborate than it needs to be. Finding the right balance is going to make your life a lot easier.
Here is what I have at the moment: (this is just a tiny bit of the folders and lists I use, as I use it as a task management system for both my professional and my personal life)
- Want to read/watch/consume
- Passion Book (subcategories: Marketing, content, misc.)
- Medium (subcategories: ideas for posts, writing tips, medium marketing)
- Business (subcategories: New business, general marketing, misc.)
If I read an article, and that spurs an idea for a Medium Post, I will put that idea into my inbox. I write a few sentences (max) about the idea. If the idea is closely related to the thing I just read, I will insert the link to it. When I process my inbox a couple of days later, I will convert the reminder to a task and put it under “Medium: Ideas for posts”
If I read something about book marketing, I will jot down a few words, and/or insert the link (or attach the document), and put it in my inbox.
If I have the time, and the reminder is easy to put in the right folder, I do it straight away. Doing this makes my inbox easier to process and less overwhelming. However, I often have ideas or notes that I don’t know exactly where to put, putting them in my inbox makes it so much more doable and easy. This means that I will actually capture it, instead of thinking; I will remember that or telling myself that I will do it later.
Sometimes, I come across stuff that I don’t want to consume right now, but I might like to read/watch/listen to at a later point in time. For example something about creating an author's page on Amazon. This information is irrelevant right now but is important knowledge when I am in the process of launching my book. I will capture it and archive it in my “Passion Book; marketing” folder.
The key to getting the system to work properly is easy. You need to capture everything right away and process the inbox often. Don’t skimp on processing the inbox. I have done this a few times, and it’s hell. It’s difficult to get yourself to do it when there are more than 50 reminders, and it is difficult to remember the reason for capturing it in the first place which can be an issue when trying to file in the right folder.
The quick guide:
- Put all your ideas, notes, things to read/watch and to-do’s into an inbox
- Process the inbox once a week, and put items into the appropriate folder
- Retrieve the information/idea quickly and easily when you need it.
