Second Cup: Your head is a lousy office

Don't rely on memory

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that your head is a lousy office.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Don't try to remember to do's and where tos and
how tos. Instead, get tasks, scheduled commitments, and other information
out of your head and into something much more reliable
that will help keep you on track and keep your
mind free for other things. Today's tip comes from a

(00:45):
recent article in The New York Times about the use
of professional productivity tools in our personal lives. If you
have ever sent out a doodle poll to find a
date for your book club, used a spreadsheet to coordinate
who's bringing what to Thanksgiving dinner, or if you email
your best friend as often as your boss, you understand

(01:05):
the concept. I actually think it's wise to bring the
same intentionality to our personal time that we bring to
our work, and if the tools of your professional life
can help you do that, why not use them. In
the article, productivity guru David Allen is credited with pointing

(01:26):
out that your head is a lousy office, though apparently
he used a more colorful word than lousy. In our
professional and personal lives. It is smart to remember that
humans have a lot of trouble remembering things. We mean well,
but we're busy, we get distracted. Rather than tax our

(01:50):
working memory, it's better to keep track of appointments, to dos,
priorities and so forth somewhere else that I can consult
when we need to. If you are listening to before breakfast,
you are probably more inclined than the average person to
put your scheduled commitments in a paper or digital calendar.

(02:14):
That's good for work, and it's good for personal commitments
like a date with your partner or your spin class. However,
most of us have responsibilities that are not particularly time bound.
We have tasks we need to remember. True productivity means
getting these vague thoughts out of your head, which remember,

(02:35):
is a lowsy office, and somewhere actionable. For most of us,
that means creating.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
A variety of lists. I make a weekly priority list
every Friday about the main things that need to get
done that week. I make daily to do lists, where
I pull items off the weekly list based on what
else I have going on. I also keep a Friday
punch list of little tasks that I need to tackle

(03:03):
at some point, things like making a hair appointment or
ordering a gift. I add to this list as I
think of these things, and then I aim to do
them all in one fell swoop at a low energy time.
Hence why I call it a Friday punch list. That's
a pretty good number of lists, but honestly most of

(03:24):
us should use still more. There's the grocery list, which
hopefully means you don't spend two hundred and fifty dollars
at the store and still come home with nothing for dinner.
There may be lists of desires. I like the idea
of a list of one hundred dreams of things you
might want to do someday. You could put restaurants you'd

(03:45):
like to try, or places to visit, or concerts to
experience on there. You probably also want some good system
for nudging yourself to think about things at the right time.
It turns out that.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
June is often too late to be thinking about summer plans,
at least if your kids want to go to popular camps,
or if you enjoy popular vacation destinations. So maybe you
can set a calendar alarm for a date in January
to start thinking of summer. You could set a date
in mid November to think through holiday gifts. If your

(04:23):
school district releases the calendar at a certain time of year,
you could set an alarm for that time to start
putting in PTO requests. The point here is that you
aren't going to remember to do this on your own.
You might think, how could I not remember to start
planning the summer? But life gets busy. You'll have a

(04:44):
huge work project in January, or everyone will get sick,
and it will just slip your mind yet again. You
might not hit some deadlines. You might mean to remember
your sister's birthday, but you know you forgot it last year.
Do you really trust your brain to remember this year,

(05:06):
even though it's failed before. Your brain is a lousy office.
The support staff is massively subpar. You need systems that
actually work for you. So get it all out of
your head and you'll be much better off. If you're

(05:26):
interested in the New York Times article I mentioned, you
can find it at ny Times dot com by searching
on its title when did our personal lives get so professional?
In addition to David Allen, I am cited in the
article too. I'd love to hear what you think about
using professional productivity tools and your personal life. You can

(05:48):
reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
to making the moose of our tech.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Hey everybody, 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 E the number four then breakfast pod.
You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast

(06:28):
Podcasts at iHeartMedia dot com. That Before Breakfast is spelled
out with all the letters. Thanks so much. Should I
look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

(06:51):
favorite shows.