One of my favorite books is Make Time, written by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. It’s full of tips and tricks on how to spend your time wisely. But one of these tips that is one of the most helpful for me went pretty much unnoticed. Perhaps that’s because it’s only a short, 8-line paragraph in this idea-packed book. The idea is to make a “Random Question” List.
Let’s say you’re focusing on writing an article, an article about society’s lack of love for the Mini-standards of USB cables and SD cards. Everything is going great. You have just finished the part where you talk about how sad it is that the only products still using mini USB are knock-off GoPros. But then for no apparent reason your brain, if it works like mine, goes:
Hey, remember that old anime movie about a girl who’s raising signal flags every morning. There was that one scene in which a boy translates the meaning of the flags to his friend. Then his friend tells him that it’s kinda cool that he knows the code for signal flags. Maybe we should also take a look at how signal flags work‽
That’s how it goes. After two hours, you finally find yourself exhausted by looking up guides for learning the flag alphabet, and you haven’t made progress on your article.
To make sure you never have to face this situation ever again, I’d like to introduce you to the idea of making a “Random Question” List. The idea is really simple. Every time, your brain goes wild and wants you to research some Random Question. Just write the question down on a sheet of paper. This might be an already prepared list or just a random sheet of paper. You might even write it down in your Bullet Journal, if you own something like this. Then you tuck your “Random Question” List, your RQL, away again and go on with your work. When you’re finished working for that day and only when you’re really done, you can go and find answers to those urgent questions. And maybe you find that some questions aren’t as important, and you just cross them out.
You might think to yourself: This sounds way too easy. How am I supposed to remember to write my questions down instead of going on a Wikipedia spree, when my brain is taking over? Don’t worry, I have found a few techniques that can help you:
The most simple thing to prevent yourself from doing research for your random questions on the internet is probably to just stick a sticky note to your monitor to remind you of your plans.
If you need something more drastic, like myself, I recommend blocking your web browser, while you’re working. I have heard the tools freedom, Cold Turkey and Forest being praised a lot for blocking your browser. If you need your browser for doing actual research, I recommend that you find yourself a browser plugin that lets you whitelist the sites you need and block the rest or blacklist the most distracting.
If you’re using an online tool like Google Docs to do your work, I recommend you check out a service like WebCatalog or Fluid that allows you to create desktop applications from Web Services.
Or you just stick a sticky note to your monitor to remind you of your plans.
I’ve already mentioned that you might want to write your Random Question List into your bullet journal or just a regular notebook. I don’t own a bullet journal, but I know that all task, notes, and events have special symbols. For inspiration, I just wanted you to tell that, if I write a random question into my little pocket notebook, I like to mark it with a little encircled question mark.
Bye.
P.S.: If you remembered the scene as well, but have no idea from which movie it came, it’s from From Up on Poppy Hill. It’s a great movie.
P.P.S: Automatic card shuffling machines cost on Amazon between 10$ and 20$.
