Effective Ways to Capture Thoughts & Making a To-Do list work for you!

Life starts happening and information begins to flood our minds the moment we open our eyes in the morning. Our attention may be immediately drawn to the beautiful sunshine seeping through the windows or we may be contemplating whether the coffee waiting downstairs taste better or the current warm bed situation feels better. Regardless if you are a “five more minutes” or a “get up and go” person, ideas will never stop flowing into your head. The typical human brain has about 86 billion neurons and each neuron typically fires 5 - 50 times every second.

Daily interactions with our environment are endless and each connection leaves a mark on our psyche or changes us in one way or another. Hence, how we capture our thoughts and effectively process them can motivate or hinder our productivity. Here are some tips that we found helpful! Start feeling like you are charging forward in a marathon rather than getting tied up on a hamster wheel.  

Choose Your Tools Wisely

Capturing your daily thoughts and mental notes effectively will help keep your free-floating anxiety at bay. Our days are filled with both scheduled appointments and random interactions that may call for subsequent actions to take place. Choose tools that are right for you as value is greatly dependent on whether you use it or not.

Notebooks are great for individuals who enjoy writing things down and designs range from lined, dotted, and grid. Apps, including Google Tasks, Todoist, Nozbe, Microsoft To-Do, Thing, and much more, are practical options as data may be shared with multiple users and programs can be accessed on the phone, tablet, or computer. Two systems can also be used in conjunction with each other.

Hey Siri!

Recording notes may not be an option for you while you are driving. Have you tried having a quick chat with Siri? Let her record your thoughts in your to-do list and transfer the details to another platform at the end of the day. Choices are endless on both the physical and software front. Narrow down your methods and focus on one or two tools to avoid wasting time checking multiple platforms. Tools are only worthwhile if they are right for you. 

It’s all in the details

We are all driven to complete tasks even though procrastination or roadblocks may get in the way. Closure and completion feel good and gives us a burst of energy. Nothing feels better than checking off a task or marvelling at a finished project. We can all experience this moment by structuring our to-do tasks effectively. Lists are nothing new and we have all tried it one way or another in our lives.

How many times have you felt stressed and abandoned your lists? The challenge is not in the list itself, but the description of the task. Simply listing “Plan Birthday” creates more chaos in our minds as the task at hand is not concise or action directed. This then becomes various subtasks that float around our mind space and we become overwhelmed. Fatigue often results as we can’t trust the physical list in front of us or the notes floating in our head. Take some time to organize your thoughts and record the actual tasks that need to be done. Whether it be to create a guest list, email vendors, or research venues, you will edge closer to completion just by creating an effective and concise list. 

Let us know if this blog post helped and what other topics you’d like us to talk about!

xx

Glo Media