Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is that your head is a lousy office. Don't
Speaker 1: try to remember to do's and where tos and how tos. Instead,
Speaker 1: get tasks, scheduled commitments, and other information out of your
Speaker 1: head and into something much more reliable that will help
Speaker 1: keep you on track and keep your mind free for
Speaker 1: other things. Today's tip comes from a recent article in
Speaker 1: The New York Times about the use of professional productivity
Speaker 1: tools in our personal lives. If you have ever sent
Speaker 1: out a doodle poll to find a date for your
Speaker 1: book club, used a spreadsheet to coordinate who's bringing what
Speaker 1: to Thanksgiving dinner, or if you email your best friend
Speaker 1: as often as your boss, you understand the concept. I
Speaker 1: actually think it's wise to bring the same intentionality to
Speaker 1: our personal time that we bring to our work, and
Speaker 1: if the tools of your professional life can help you
Speaker 1: do that, why not use them. In the article, productivity
Speaker 1: guru David Allen is credited with pointing out that your
Speaker 1: head is a lousy office, though apparently he used a
Speaker 1: more colorful word than lousy. In our professional and personal lives.
Speaker 1: It is smart to remember that humans have a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble remembering things. We mean well, but we're busy,
Speaker 1: we get distracted. Rather than tax our working memory, it's
Speaker 1: better to keep track of appointments, to dos, priorities and
Speaker 1: so forth somewhere else that I can consult when we
Speaker 1: need to. If you are listening to before breakfast, you
Speaker 1: are probably more inclined than the average person to put
Speaker 1: your scheduled commitments in a paper or digital calendar. That's
Speaker 1: good for work, and it's good for personal commitments like
Speaker 1: a date with your partner or your spin class. However,
Speaker 1: most of us have responsibilities that are not particularly time bound.
Speaker 1: We have tasks we need to remember.
Speaker 2: True productivity means getting these vague thoughts out of your head,
Speaker 2: which remember, is a lowsy office, and somewhere actionable. For
Speaker 2: most of us, that means creating a variety of lists.
Speaker 2: I make a weekly priority list every Friday about the
Speaker 2: main things that need to get done that week. I
Speaker 2: make daily to do lists, where I pull items off
Speaker 2: the weekly list based on what else I have going on.
Speaker 2: I also keep a Friday punch list of little tasks
Speaker 2: that I need to tackle at some point, things like
Speaker 2: making a hair appointment or ordering a gift. I add
Speaker 2: to this list as I think of these things, and
Speaker 2: then I aim to do them all in one fell
Speaker 2: swoop at a low energy time. Hence why I call
Speaker 2: it a Friday punch list. That's a pretty good number
Speaker 2: of lists, but honestly most of us should use still more.
Speaker 2: There's the grocery list, which hopefully means you don't spend
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty dollars at the store and still
Speaker 2: come home with nothing for dinner. There may be lists
Speaker 2: of desires. I like the idea of a list of
Speaker 2: one hundred dreams of things you might want to do someday.
Speaker 2: You could put restaurants you'd like to try, or places
Speaker 2: to visit, or concerts to experience on there. You probably
Speaker 2: also want some good system for nudging yourself to think
Speaker 2: about things at the right time. It turns out that
Speaker 2: June is often too late to be thinking about summer plans,
Speaker 2: at least if your kids want to go to popular camps,
Speaker 2: or if you enjoy popular vacation destinations. So maybe you
Speaker 2: can set a calendar alarm for a date in January
Speaker 2: to start thinking of summer. You could set a date
Speaker 2: in mid November to think through holiday gifts. If your
Speaker 2: school district releases the calendar at a certain time of year,
Speaker 2: you could set an alarm for that time to start
Speaker 2: putting in PTO requests. The point here is that you
Speaker 2: aren't going to remember to do this on your own.
Speaker 2: You might think, how could I not remember to start
Speaker 2: planning the summer? But life gets busy. You'll have a
Speaker 2: huge work project in January, or everyone will get sick,
Speaker 2: and it will just slip your mind yet again. You
Speaker 2: might not hit some deadlines. You might mean to remember
Speaker 2: your sister's birthday, but you know you forgot it last year.
Speaker 1: Do you really trust your brain to remember this year,
Speaker 1: even though it's failed before. Your brain is a lousy office.
Speaker 1: The support staff is massively subpar. You need systems that
Speaker 1: actually work for you. So get it all out of
Speaker 1: your head and you'll be much better off. If you're
Speaker 1: interested in the New York Times article I mentioned, you
Speaker 1: can find it at ny Times dot com by searching
Speaker 1: on its title when did our personal lives get so professional?
Speaker 1: In addition to David Allen, I am cited in the
Speaker 1: article too. I'd love to hear what you think about
Speaker 1: using professional productivity tools and your personal life. You can
Speaker 1: reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
Speaker 1: to making the loose of our tech.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, I'd love to hear from you. You can
Speaker 2: send me your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just
Speaker 2: connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before
Speaker 2: Breakfast Pod. That's b E the number four then breakfast pod.
Speaker 2: You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartMedia dot com. That Before Breakfast is spelled
Speaker 2: out with all the letters. Thanks so much. Should I
Speaker 2: look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
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