Use a Single Notebook for Notes
One of the most wonderful things about having pencils, pens, and paper, is that we can jot down notes. Lots of notes! If you own sticky pads, you can jot down notes and put them everywhere. While this is great way to remember things, it can quickly create a lot of clutter. Also, since notes are spread out, we never consider them relative to the other notes we have. “Remember to buy Q-tips” becomes the most important thing because we’re staring at the sticky note, not because we’ve considered it in the context of everything else we need to finish.
Quick and Dirty Tip: Grab yourself a single notebook to use for all your note taking. Whenever you have something you want to jot down, do it in your notebook. Write the date by each entry. The notebook will become your ongoing repository for the random-things-you-need-to-capture-but-you-don’t-know-where. This is your catch-all notebook, not a to-do list or personal productivity tool. At the end of the day, review the day’s entries and transfer anything that warrants being turned into a to-do item or calendar item to your task management or calendar system.
I’m Stever Robbins, host of the Get-it-Done Guy podcast. I help executives reclaim their time by providing focus and accountability around their most important goals. If you want to have one of your most productive days ever, try one of my Do-It Days™: Do it Days.
Notebook image courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
