But I keep falling back to the simple methodology captured so cheekily in this vintage notepad: Every day you just write down the things you have to do today, adding new tasks and copying the unfinished tasks from yesterday into today’s list. The act of writing the tasks again makes you think about each of them just a little bit, helping you prioritize them and bringing all of them into your consciousness for a few critical minutes, ensuring that you’re actually thinking about what you have to do instead of relying on technology to think about them for you.
Thanks for this post, Chris. It’s interesting how technology can end up slowing us down, sometimes. Sometimes all you need is a pencil and a piece of paper.
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4 responses to “Putting Things Off to Get Things Done”
Like millions of other people, I am constantly trying new technology-based tools to manage my many to-do tasks — Things, Remember The Milk, Gootodo, Basecamp and Backpack, Chandler, The Hit List, and many others. I’ve even mocked up a few of my own.
But I keep falling back to the simple methodology captured so cheekily in this vintage notepad: Every day you just write down the things you have to do today, adding new tasks and copying the unfinished tasks from yesterday into today’s list. The act of writing the tasks again makes you think about each of them just a little bit, helping you prioritize them and bringing all of them into your consciousness for a few critical minutes, ensuring that you’re actually thinking about what you have to do instead of relying on technology to think about them for you.
Thanks for this post, Chris. It’s interesting how technology can end up slowing us down, sometimes. Sometimes all you need is a pencil and a piece of paper.
Also, sorry for inadvertently shortening your name!
@Joey Pfeifer: Chris is fine! 🙂