Remember the tulips

How to make sure you remember things at the right time

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to remember the tulips. You can become
the kind of person who remembers things when you need
to remember them by building a very simple weekly planning

(00:27):
practice into your life. Make this work and you will
always have tulips blooming come spring. In my part of
the world, the tulips bloom at some point in April.
These gorgeous flowers turn the world into a burst of
primary colors. I've even been a tulip tourist sometime. One

(00:49):
of my favorite experiences ever was seeing kuckenhof gardens in
the Netherlands in April. Wow, what a moment to be
thankful for the extravagant beauty the planet and its people
offers up. When we see tulips blooming in spring, we
might think I'd love to have some more of those
blooming in my yard. But here's the challenge. Tulip bulbs

(01:13):
generally need to be planted in fall. You need to
buy the bulbs and dig the holes and say October
when there is no obvious nudge to do so. The
nudge to plant tulips. That flowers are blooming all around you.
Happens in spring when it's not the right time to
make that desire happen. So how do we reconcile this? Well,

(01:37):
it's actually quite simple to guarantee that you will remember
things when you want to remember them. You simply need
to build a designated weekly planning session into your life
and have a calendar that you know you will look
at during that planning session. I planned my weeks on
Friday afternoons. I heartily recommend that slot, though I know

(02:00):
at other people like Sunday evenings or Monday mornings. The
actual time doesn't matter so much is that you know
it will happen. You need to trust that once every
week you will look at your life and your time
and your commitments and figure out what you need to
do and what you want to do. As for the calendar,

(02:22):
you need to know that if you put a note
on it for a future time, there will be a
time when you look at it and plan with that
in mind. So, for instance, if you plan on Fridays
on some April day when you see the tulips and think, hey,
I'd like some tulips next year, you can write a
note on your calendar for some Friday in the fall

(02:43):
about the tulips. Then come that Friday you will see
the note. You will either put tulip bulb planting on
your calendar for some point in the next week that
you are currently planning, or you will push it to
the next Friday to reconsider. But either way you will
remember the tulips in the fall, even though this is

(03:04):
not the obvious time to remember it. The calendar and
the weekly planning session allow you to send a note
securely to your future self. This is how I managed
to occasionally make reservations for things that quickly sell out.
We've stayed at Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone, eating at
French Laundry in California, gotten tickets to eat breakfast with Santa,

(03:27):
some pretty hot commodity places, and so forth. When I
think of these things, I put a note to myself
on the calendar for the friday ahead of the slot
when the reservations open, and I note the window on
my calendar too. Then when I plan my upcoming week,
I can build the reservation window into my model. I
know not to take a phone call at eight a m.

(03:49):
Tuesday if that is when the window opens. In any case,
there aren't that many occasions when I need to get
a reservation for stuff in a specific two minute time frame.
But there are a lot of things in life that
are worth thinking about ahead of time. For instance, a
few months ago, a blog reader recommended that I go
visit a particular tulip farm in New Jersey that, while

(04:12):
not Kuckenhof, is supposed to be pretty awesome. I want
to go when the tulips are at their peak, so
I put that on a Friday on my calendar for
early April. On that Friday coming up, I will look
at my upcoming days and weeks and figure out where
that can go. I sent this message to my future self,
and I know my future self will see it. This

(04:35):
increases the chances of having more fun. I am guessing,
as a before Breakfast listener that you probably do have
a weekly planning time. But maybe you mostly use this
to figure out your upcoming work assignments. And that's fine,
but you could expand your use of this practice to
build more exciting things into your life professionally and personally too.

(04:59):
Start thinking about what messages you could send to your
future self and get in the habit of putting these
notes on your calendar for your future planning times, you
won't forget things you want to do, and you will
have access to those reminders when they are most worth remembering.
This is an incredibly useful breakthrough. It's the kind that

(05:20):
has you enjoying your own tulips rather than just hoping
you'll remember in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening,
and here's to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody,

(05:41):
I'd love to hear from you. You can send me
your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with
me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod
that's B the number four, then Breakfast p o D.
You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
podcast at iHeartMedia dot com that Before Breakfast is spelled

(06:04):
out with all the letters. Thanks so much, I look
forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.