Your Mind Was Meant to Be a Factory (Not a Warehouse)
It’s important that you use your brain for task selection instead of using it for task storage.
Once I started to take the time to capture thoughts, tasks, and ideas that I had on paper or in a digital workspace, I began to rely less on my brain to remember those things.
Now I absolutely don’t trust my brain to remember those things.
When it does, it is a bonus but I use that recollection not to take action on the thing I just remembered but to figure out if I need to take action on it sooner than I had thought when I captured it in the first place.
Essentially, remembering things for me isn’t about recall anymore. It’s a trigger to show me what’s truly important to me.
The only way I was able to change the way I use my brain as a means for task selection instead of task storage was to create a method of capturing the things I needed to store elsewhere. I built one that works equally well on paper or in apps. I trust that framework after using it for several years.
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Now my brain can do one of two things when it come to task selection:
- Review my to do list and select tasks to do from there.
- Recall something I’d captured and make sure it gets done sooner rather than later.
Every morning I complete what I call The Daily CT Scan. After that, I have a good sense of what order I’m going to work on my tasks. But if my brain brings something else to the forefront then I’ll reassess things.
Sometimes that means doing that recalled task on that day (after checking to see when I initially had decided to bring it to my attention through my to do list) and sometimes it means planning to do that task in the near future (by making it a greater priority on my to do list for either the day I had it scheduled to come to my attention or even sooner).
This task selection process didn’t happen overnight. It took building and fostering my capture method until it became habitual. Once I trusted it (and myself with it) then my brain was able to the work it was better designed to do: ensure that the tasks that were important to me didn’t fall through the cracks.
Your mind was meant to be a factory, not a warehouse. Remember that and use it as fuel to foster a task selection and task storage process that works for you.
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Mike Vardy is a writer, productivity strategist, and the creator of TimeCrafting. He is the author of the upcoming book TimeCrafting: A Better Way to Get The Right Things Done. Mike is also renowned speaker and has taught productivity on CreativeLive, Skillshare, and LinkedIn Learning where his courses are among the most popular in the business category.
