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