 There's a practice that I started doing several years ago that has made me a lot more productive than I was before. The practice is to capture, categorize, and calendar. I'm going to teach this to you in this video and as I do, I invite you to think about how you could implement this idea as soon as possible because I do believe it can help you become more productive. And I look forward to hearing from you to know how it went for you. So the first part of the practice is to capture, and this is to write down all the new ideas that come to you, all the new tasks that you think you want to do, and any problems that come to you that you want to solve. New information, new tasks, and new problems that seem important to you rather than try to remember it, write it down. Because our human brains have evolved not to be good at remembering things, but to be good at other things such as recognizing patterns, such as problem solving, such as relating to others, such as improvisation. Those things that we do, improvisation, pattern recognition, solving problems that are especially with regards to other human beings and relating to other human beings, those things we do so much better than any computer, just about any computer that's available now. But even the simplest computer can remember things more accurately than the smartest human being, the simplest computer. So there's actually a famous story about Albert Einstein, I'll share with you briefly, which is a journalist asked Albert Einstein for his phone number. Now remember this, back when Albert Einstein was living and working, the phone number was like if someone asked you for your email address today, it's that common, okay? And Albert Einstein said, wait, let me go look up my phone number. And this was a famous story because Albert Einstein couldn't even be bothered to remember his phone number. Why is that? It's because I believe Albert Einstein knew that we're trying to remember things takes away your conscious energy from using your mind for more creative tasks, problem solving, things like pattern recognition, things like that. Which is why I write down everything too, I try to remember nothing. As another example, and just to finish that story, right, Albert Einstein as we all know was one of the smartest people who ever lived in terms of being creative and solving mathematical problems and physics, creating physical theory, theory and physics and things like that. So if you want to be smarter, like Albert Einstein, write everything down, don't bother to remember anything that you can write down. So in my example, I have two checklists that I look at every single day and I've looked at it for years, every single week, weekday, workday. One is my morning review checklist and one is my end of day checklist. I start my day with a specific list of things that I do to kind of orient myself, orient myself to this day and to start well. And same thing when I end my day, I look at my checklist to end my day well. Now I've been looking at the same checklists now for years. Now I do modify it occasionally as I go, but it's been more or less the same for years and I still look at it every day because I don't bother remembering them. I just go and look at what my current checklist is. Again, I only modify it once every couple of months, so it's more or less the same. And yeah, and it's worked so well for me. So I really ask you, what checklist do you have that you look at throughout your day, throughout your week? I hope you'll have more checklists after this little video here, but really every new idea that comes to you, there's a saying that says, don't believe everything you think just because this, this discovery of an idea came to you doesn't mean that it's important. Distance creates perspective. So if you, if I have a great idea, supposedly great idea has come to you, write it down and sleep on it. Literally come back to it the following day and you'll have more perspective about that idea. Same thing. A new challenge, a new problem arises in your work. It doesn't mean it's the end of the world and when, when again, when we discover something new, a new piece of information, a new task or a new problem, the moment of discovery creates an illusion that it's more important than it actually is. Distance creates perspective. So a new idea comes to you, new task, new problem, you write it down and try to revisit it later, another day, another week, because you'll have more perspective on it. So capture all your ideas and work with them later. That's the first part of this practice is to capture. Now even in the shower, I don't know about you, but I do get some great ideas in the shower or what I think might be great ideas. So what do, and oftentimes by the time I leave the shower, the idea has left, right? Because again, our human brains are not, have not evolved to remember things. It's good at other things. So there's a product that I use called Aqua Notes and I'll put a link in the notes of this video. And it's literally waterproof paper pad, notepad, that I stick on the shower with a pencil, that's waterproof. And a new idea comes to you, I write it down right there on the Aqua Note. So that's an idea again, that's an example again of capturing all of our ideas so that we can work with them later, okay? And in terms of throughout my day, the way I capture it is to use a software called Todoist, T-O-D-O-I-S-T dot com. Todoist can be downloaded to your phone, if you carry your phone with you all the time, or obviously to your computer as well. And it's really fast at syncing immediately when I write down an idea with all my, if I write on my phone, it'll be on my computer immediately as well, and I love using it. And throughout my day, or if I'm on my dog walk, an idea comes to me. Instead of trying to remember it, I write it down in my Todoist. Doesn't matter if you use Todoist or something else, the key is to write it down so that you can then go on to the next stage of this practice, which is to categorize, to categorize. And to categorize, I recommend that you do it at least once a day. I basically do my categorizing twice a day. Categorizing the idea is simple. You have collected all these ideas, right? Now what do you do? Do you just let them gather dust? No. You categorize them into the proper project in your life or in your work on a daily basis. So each day, you may collect, I don't know, two ideas, five ideas, 10 ideas, 20 ideas. I don't know how many ideas come to you or problems that you want to solve. But however many ideas, take a moment, a pause either at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day or both, which is what I do, to take those ideas you've collected and put them into the proper project of your life. So this does require that you name the projects in your, I'm just going to say work, but you could apply this to your life as well. But you name the various projects in your work. So maybe you have marketing, maybe you have client services, maybe you have administration, for example. So those are three main projects. And so when an idea comes to you for marketing, can you write it down? And at the end of the day, when you're categorizing your ideas, you basically move it from the inbox of your ideas to the right project. So marketing idea, then you move it into the marketing project so that you can go on to the next stage, which is calendaring, which is that every project in your work ought to have a space in your calendar so that no project falls through the cracks. So for example, if you never put on your schedule, work on your marketing, does your marketing work itself? Probably not. So I really recommend that you put on your calendar time for the various projects that are important for your work. For example, I have time set aside each week to make these videos. Otherwise, these videos aren't going to make themselves, right? And I also have time set aside to upload these videos and share them. Otherwise, these videos, even if I make the video, it's not going to share itself, right? So does that make sense? So I really recommend that you categorize the items once or twice a day after you've collected them. And then once you've categorized them, then you don't have to think about them anymore. You don't have to worry about them because they're in the right categories. And then if you calendar in your projects, and I use Google Calendar, which is a free, wonderful, free calendaring software that's easy to use and it's on the web, it's don't have to download anything. Although there is also a free smartphone app that you can download for Google Calendar. I use Google Calendar. And what's nice about using something like Google Calendar is that you can easily make an event, recur, repeat itself. So for example, I have Wednesday afternoons. Every Wednesday afternoon, I have record videos for the following week. And so that's just a repeating event. That's a two hour repeating appointment that I have with myself. So that I make sure that that's there. And if a client wants to schedule time with me, it's a great. I have time to talk with you except on Wednesday afternoons. And of course, I have other things scheduled for myself. In the future video, I'll actually show you how I manage my calendar. But in this video, I just want to encourage you to capture all your ideas and challenges and tasks every single day as you go through the day. And then don't forget to categorize them once or twice a day. And then don't forget to calendar in your categories for the various projects of your work so that basically all your ideas, essentially, are going to be done because they're in the calendar. But the calendar isn't going to be cluttered up with each individual idea because that'd be too much to type in. But the calendar will basically show marketing Wednesday afternoons or administration Friday mornings or whatever it is. So that when it comes to Friday morning and it says administration on your calendar, you then open up wherever you categorize those ideas for administration, whether it's in your to-do list projects or whether it's in a paper folder where you collect all your ideas or whether it's not a document on the computer. Does that make sense? Capture, categorize, and then calendar. So the other thing that I want to mention is that, or the thing I want to repeat and to encourage you to remember is that when an idea comes to you, this is the reason why so many people feel anxious, overwhelmed, is that they just, idea comes to them. Again, there's the illusion of importance when an idea first comes to you or when a problem first presents itself, the illusion of momentary importance. And because people don't realize there's that illusion, they think it's important, and so therefore they pursue too many shiny new objects, they pursue too many new ideas in the moment or they try to solve problems right in the moment when that problem takes longer than a minute to solve. And I do have to say, though, when a new idea comes to me, I capture it. And when I'm doing my categorization once or twice a day, if it says to categorize a particular thing and I know that that thing is going to be so quick to do, so easy to do, I do it right then and there. But if that thing takes longer than one minute to do, then I categorize it into the proper project, into the proper place on my to-do list software so that when it comes time for that project each week, I take out my to-do list project and I work on that project. So don't believe everything you think, write it down and then categorize it once or twice a day and then so that at the proper time in your calendar, you can work on that project. If you do this, you will find yourself being more relaxed and yet having more focus because you're no longer slowing down your brain to try to remember things and you're no longer feeling hurried and sort of anxious by pursuing every new idea that comes to you that seems important, but you're relaxed and you're calm and you're focused knowing that any idea can present itself to you. You'll simply write it down if it seems like a good idea and then you'll revisit it at the right time when it's in your calendar to work on that particular category. So I look forward to hearing if you have any questions about this and how you're implementing it for yourself.