Save Your Internal Brain By Using An External Brain
A simple system for getting organized and relieving stress
When I became a project manager at King Tide, I had limited experience in Website Development. I quickly learned that I needed a system to stay organized. After a lot of research, I discovered the Getting Things Done Method and was introduced to the concept of the external brain.
What the hell is an external brain?
Well, first I should explain that our brain, or let’s call it our “internal brain”, works best when its creating solutions to problems, generating ideas or making decisions. However, it’s not the best at remembering tasks or obligations.
Once you decide to do something or even worse, you forget to capture it, you create what’s called an “open loop”. An open loop is any task that hasn’t been properly defined and delegated. If we allow these loops to remain in our mind, they will take our attention away and leave us feeling scattered.
You know those times when you get back from a vacation or a busy weekend and nothing is organized? You have to first spend time and energy organizing your tasks before you can begin working. This is one example of what can happen when you don’t have a system to capture and organize these open loops.
“Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax. Anything that does not belong where it is, the way it is, is an “open loop,” which will be pulling on your attention if it’s not appropriately managed” — David Allen
To start closing these loops you need to build an external brain. An external brain is an organized and reliable system for capturing, clarifying, organizing, reviewing, and executing your open loops.
With that in mind, I’d like to share with you the external brain system that worked for me.
My External Brain System
The Tool — Trello
Everyone has their own personalized tool for staying organized, from a notebook to a Google document to even a simple calendar. Regardless of what system you use, they all should have one thing in common: they get your to-dos out of your head and into an external system.
The tool that I ultimately chose to use was Trello because it was free and highly visual. Trello is based on the Kanban system of project and task management. The board represents a project or a place to keep track of your information and then within the board, there are 2 key components:
- Lists: These keep cards organized in their various stages of progress.
- Cards: The fundamental unit of a board. Cards are used to represent tasks and ideas.
I created a ‘Weekly To Do’ board with the following lists: Inbox, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Done (pictured below).
Consider this board the tool you will use for your new external brain system.
With this tool now in place, let’s explore the GTD methodology and how we can incorporate this into the Trello board.
The Framework — Getting Things Done
For those who aren’t familiar, ‘Getting Things Done’ is a method for organizing your to-dos, priorities, and your schedule in a way that makes them all manageable. One of GTD’s biggest benefits is that it makes it easy to see what you have on your plate. It also has a strong emphasis on getting your to-dos out of your head and into a system you can refer to. This clears your mind of any mental distractions that will keep you from working efficiently.
At its core, GTD is categorized into five steps:
- Capture — Collect what has your attention
- Clarify — Process what it means
- Organize — Put it where it belongs
- Reflect — Review Frequently
- Engage — Simply Do
It’s an incredibly simple but extremely effective framework and I suggest you read the book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen when you have some time.
Now for the good stuff! I will now go through how I incorporate each of the 5-Steps into a effective and trustworthy system using the ‘Weekly To Do’ Trello board…
The System or “The Closer of Loops”
Step #1: Capture
Tasks will pop-up constantly throughout a normal week and you need a place to capture these. This is exactly what the ‘Inbox’ list is for. Consider this list a place to brain dump everything that you need to do and don’t want to forget.
Tip: Some people like to create 1 card for each task they have, but this list can get a bit cluttered if you add too many cards. I recommend creating the high-level task and adding in any of the other steps within the card to save some space.
Step #2: Clarify
Once I add a task to the ‘Inbox’ list, I immediately include a few key details in the description of the card. This simple step removes the open loop from my head and stores it in my trustworthy system. Then when I review this task later, I am confident that I will understand exactly what needs to be done.
Tip: If you are using this board to manage multiple clients or projects, use labels to help differentiate tasks. For example: Red label can be for client 1, Yellow label can be for client 2. Also, if you’d like to organize the cards by labels and you are using Google Chrome, check out Ultimello.
Step #3: Reflect & Organize — The Weekly Review
The Weekly Review is the most important step and should be completed at the end of each week. This review will help you get clear and get current.
Every Friday, I perform the following tasks:
- Archive all cards under ‘Done’ and any cards that have been stagnant for a long time.
- Review all tasks that were not completed during the week and determine if they are still valid. If they are, I will move these to the ‘Inbox’ to be re-organized for the next week.
- Review each active project and brain dump all tasks into the ‘Inbox’ that I feel need to be completed next week.
- Finally, once I have captured & clarified all my tasks for next week, I attempt to plan out my week by moving the tasks from the Inbox to a specific day.
Tip: If you would like to keep some cards that are on hold, create another List called ‘Backlog’ at the very far end. But, be sure to check this list during your weekly review.
“If you’re not doing a weekly review, you’re always doing a weekly review but never finishing” — David Allen
Step #4: Engage or Execute
If you took the time to review and organize your entire next week, once you come into the office on Monday, you will be ready to get to work. The beauty of the Weekly Review is that you only have to do a solid 1–2 hours of real thinking and then the rest of the time you can execute. This is what stress-free productivity is all about!
Tip: If you are using labels for each project, press ‘F’ for Filter and choose a label color to only display the tasks relevant to that label. This is useful when your board begins to become packed with tasks and it’s hard to visualize each task.
“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.” — Alfred North Whitehead
Conclusion
The above external brain system has worked well for me, but it isn’t for everyone and it may not be the best productivity system for you.
Whatever system you decide to use, make sure it’s trustworthy and serves the functions it’s supposed to serve. If you trust your system it will free your mind to be creative and allow you to be more present in life which in my mind, is the most important thing of all.
Thanks for reading! Let’s Rise Together.
