The Longest To-Do List Ever
“We should have left a few hours earlier” you groan, sitting in traffic on your roadtrip home. “Let’s remember that for next time” you said, pulling into the driveway after hours of traffic. Your words hang in the air long enough for you to make a mental note, one you feel confident storing in your brain for an indeterminate amount of time. The next road trip is bound to force that mental note to the front of your brain and announce itself proudly, right? Surely you have a robust filing system for your mental notes, each note stored alphabetically and by category, allowing your brain to easily thumb through these notes and find the one you need when you need it.
If your brain works this way, cheers to you! For many of us though, we are overly ambitious as to what our minds can hold. We cover our brain with mental post-its, never able to find the post-it we need, and never discarding the post-its we no longer need. Even the “wallet, keys, phone” song you sing as you leave the house is a mental post-it, which is why some people have that written down on an actual post-it on their front door.
Part of my job as a Project Manager, whether I am managing a website rebrand, a company acquisition, or a system implementation in Asana, is to turn mental notes into a workable system. Every person, team, and company is different, with mental notes varying in complexity. Your mental notes can’t simply move to google calendar as reminders. You need a framework in place that allows you to get the notes you need when you need them.
Before you can build a system, you have to go through the process of cognitive clutter-clearing. Take your Marie Kondo closet cleaning skills and apply them to your mind. Grab a cute notebook you got as a gift. Open a google doc. Start a new page in Notion. Find a whiteboard. Write down everything you need to do in the next three months. Whatever brain dump medium works for you will do!
If you think it, write it down. Even if you think you won’t do it, someone else will do it, or you don’t want to do it - still write it down.
Here is an example of some items on my non-work list:
Make annual physical appointment
Buy Caitlin 40th Birthday Present (suggestions welcome!)
Send invite for Galentine’s Day Party (it’s going to be epic!)
Check Airbnb cancellation date
Buy new running shoes
Book Edinburgh flights
Research contractors for new floors
Buy decaf nespresso pods
Get tickets to Captain America
Find a place to put reminder about leaving earlier for roadtrip
Try to do this exercise for 30-60 minutes in one sitting. And when you are done, pat yourself on the back, grab a beverage, and put your feet up. There’s more work to be done, but you’ve done enough today. Unlike when you empty the entire contents of your closet, you can walk away from this list for now. Luckily, it just a piece of paper or a digital file, not every article of clothing and backpack you own on the floor of your bedroom.
Next time you seem stressed and you feel like you have a lot on your mind, take it off your mind and dump it somewhere else. Release the cognitive load and you’ll feel a weight lifted.
