Capture Everything — Summer Shorts
It’s happened to all of us. We have that thought or someone texts us. It comes at a time we cannot plan for. We can’t do anything about it right now. You know it will hours or even days, before the request or the information is actually relevant. Your mum texts you and reminds you it is Auntie Maggie’s 70th birthday next week. The problem you have been wrestling with for weeks is far from your thoughts a when the AHA! moment strikes. But you are hiking up a mountain and can’t do anything about it. Or you get the card, you write the card and you put the card in your bag to post before leaving for work only to find the card buried in your bag 6 weeks later.
It has happened to all of us. Our minds are not that great at holding onto to information and bringing back to us at a time when it is actually helpful. At a time we can actually do something with it.
This is why we say capture everything. If our brains are not a good place to store every piece of information and remember everything that we need to do then we need to work out something that is. I’ll talk about this tomorrow.
But for today, I want to argue that we should, as far as is possible, seek to capture everything. Be indiscriminate. Now if someone sends you a text message by all means reply and be done with it if you can. But if the input, whatever it may be and wherever it comes from, can’t be dealt with immediately, then do not trust that somehow, someway you will remember it at the time that you need to. Do not trust that you will remember to open up your message app and reply when you have the time and information to hand. Don’t trust that the brilliant idea you had whilst walking in the countryside will still be there when you get home.
Capture everything. Indiscriminately.
That’s the basic rule. But before we move on I need to caveat that. Do you really need to capture everything? Every idle thought, every small task. Everything….really??
Well yes and no.
Yes you do
I say yes because the basic principle is to eliminate distractions, to maintain focus. Whether that is focus on your work or an activity you are doing or being present with the people you are with. Exercising discernment on what you do and don’t capture will draw your focus away from whatever it is you are doing whilst you give 20 seconds thought to whether or not whatever input you receive is actually valuable — potentially even more time if you stop to think about what to actually do with it first.
So I say be indiscriminate. The idea is to capture everything without really giving time to consider it, that when you can consider it at a later point when your focus is intentionally being given to deciding what to do with something — even if it means you delete 70% of what you note down.
No you don’t
I say no, because as you become more practiced, discernment will come more naturally to you. This predominantly applies to the thoughts and ideas that strike you whilst you are doing something else. I wouldn’t worry too much about this though. And remember — what I am not talking about is where choose not to write it down because you’ll ‘remember it later’. You won’t.
A short word to those of who are thinking we don’t want to be whipping out our phones or a notebook to write something down when we are busy doing something else.
My next post will focus on tools we use to capture things into. For now, remember — the aim is to reduce distraction, not increase it. We write things down so we don’t have to think or worry about them now. The idea is that it actually increases our ability to focus and be present in any given moment, rather than distracted by our thoughts. But what about inputs from other sources? Well, if you don’t want to be distracted by your phone, why is it not on do not disturb? Why does every single application have permission to bleep and blurp at you like an irate R2-D2? If you are meeting someone and want to present with them, a text message, a whatsapp message or phone call should not take priority (unless you are expecting a call about something that you cannot miss). If it is important, they will call back or send a message or voice mail that you can pick up when you intend to do so.
So, as I said, the aim is to minimise distractions.
Capture Everything in Practice
Yesterday I read a chapter of Tiago Forte’s excellent new book Building a Second Brain. Much of this is adapted from chapter 4 — Capture: Keep what resonates. So if you want to know more — get the book.
I was struck whilst reading it that it shows the power of this habit of capturing everything and it also dispels the myth that we are all inclined to believe. The myth being that artists or creative types have some kind of gift that is totally beyond us mere mortals. Now, obviously some are more creative than others but in the chapter Tiago looks at a case study of Taylor Swift. We may not like her particular brand of music but none of us can deny that she is successful in her field and is good at what she does. We would say that she is creative. But, what most of us, myself included would not know about or acknowledge would be her creative process.
The chapter points out that if you watch any of the documentaries there are that detail how Taylor makes her music and writes her songs, you’ll note that she is always on her phone. But she isn’t checking Instagram or Twitter. It’s because her phone is where she keeps all of her notes. Every time she has an idea for a lyric, a line, and introduction or a melody that she thinks might work in a song someday, she notes it down on her phone.
What she then has at her disposal 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year is a self made library of thoughts, ideas, lyrics, intros and melodies that she can draw from to create song after song, album after album. She doesn’t write her music by locking herself in a cabin for hours on end, starting with a blank page and coming out with song. She draws from every idle thought or idea she has and combines them into something that works.
I am never going to be a best selling singer/songwriter. But I do have thoughts and ideas about a whole lot of things through the day. It might be things that would be fun to do with the children, ideas for future blog posts, solutions to work problems, or anything. If I don’t write them down, I can never use them. If I do, they are there for the taking at any point from the moment I note them until the day I use them.
Whatever you are making. Books, pictures, photos, recipes, songs, projects, memories with your family. You can’t create it out of nothing.
Capture everything — build your library.
Capture Everything you say…but how?
Today will be brief, as there isn’t really much to say. You are persuaded no doubt of the benefits of capturing or writing down all of those idle thoughts that come your way, all of the tasks that people give to you and all of the quotes or highlights from books or articles that you read. But how?
My advice is two fold:
- Keep it simple
- Minimise the number of inputs you have
Keep it simple
Really, it needs to be something that is easily accessible at all times. For this, for most of, this is going to be our phones. They are with us at all times. So, there needs to be an app, or at most two apps, on your phone where in one or two taps you can be typing whatever it is you need to remember.
But, for those of us who don’t want to use our smart phone, or for those of us who don’t have one, we need something analog. And for all of us, there will be times that we don’t want our phones around or don’t want to get them out. For this, I recommend a note taker wallet. It’s pocket sized, has a pen loop and the one I have can hold two credit/debit cards as well as having a pouch for other stuff. And it contains a small pocket note book with simple tear off pages.
I have my phone in one pocket and my note taker wallet in the other. Sometimes I will have the note taker wallet on my desk next to me to note things down whilst I am working or in a meeting.
But — to keep it simple — I ditched the pen it came with. It required two hands to open it up to right. I needed a clicky pen so I don’t need both hands and it is much faster.
Minimise the number of inputs you have
This is all about minimising the number of places you may have to look to find something. We’ve all worked with someone who writes lists on any scrap of paper/envelope or post it they can find and then whilst meeting with you they waste 5 minutes rifling through notebooks, folders, drawers etc trying to find the list they had made for their meeting with you. So I am going to tell you how I do it. This is not meant to be prescriptive but descriptive.
In other words — don’t copy me. Unless you want to…in which case you can.
On my phone (Android) I use an app called Braintoss. Braintoss effectively is an app that will send any text you write (it also does audio notes but I don’t use this) as an email to any e-mail address you pre-load into it. One tap on the button in my phone’s dock and I am typing. One press on the send button and it goes to my default pre-loaded e-mail address, long press on the send button and it brings up the list of pre-loaded e-mail addresses for me to select. I have two pre-loaded addresses. The default sends it to my notes applications inbox. The other sends it to my to-do list application’s inbox.
On my computer I have two keyboard shortcuts set up. [Ctrl + Win + =] is a shortcut that brings up a text box where I can write a task and pressing enter adds to my task inbox. It means that whilst writing this, I have remembered that I am supposed to go to the chemist. I am nowhere near the chemist. [Ctrl+Win+=] Go the the chemist at 6pm {Enter}. and BAM! that task is in my to-do list and I am back to writing without switching apps or picking up my phone or interrupting my flow.
If it’s not a task [Ctrl + Alt + h] brings up a similar text box where I can write a note that goes into my notes apps inbox. Whilst writing this I thought of a blog post idea that I want to give time to thinking about. [Ctrl + Alt + h] What does Jesus think about my sin — or what does he think about me, whilst I am sinning {Enter} and BOOM! that’s noted for another day.
I also have a note taker wallet which in theory is for times when I don’t want my phone to be used, like when I am in bed.
Hmmm — this post is longer than I thought it would be…
E-mails/texts/whatsapps etc I need to keep/refer back to can be forwarded to either my notes app or to-do list (or at least I can save the link to the e-mail in gmail). Websites, my notes app has a really excellent web clipper (as does my to-do list but it is rare for me to use this one) so the page and the link gets saved in the inbox of my notes app. Highlights of articles I read get saved to the inbox of my notes app using an automation I have set up using a service called If This Then That (IFTTT). Highlights from ebooks, I will periodically export them and save them to my notes app. Highlights from regular physical books tend to get noted into my notes app when I review the book after I have finished it. Or if it is a longer book, when I review sections of it. Something I intend to do from now on, I picked up from my church minister which is to write a summary and review of every book I read when I have finished it.
So, there you have it. I have 3 places I need to keep tabs on. My notes app, my to-do list and my note taker wallet. Anything and everything that I need to keep will be in one of those places.
But a list 1000 lines long is just as useless as having no list at all. So we need to organise it. And that is what we move onto tomorrow*.
*you’ll have noted in my post every day for thirty days challenge that tomorrow is very fluid concept.
