It is not an existential question… đ
When I was younger, I could hold several pieces of relevant information in my brain. I could always trust my brain to remember the exact things I had to buy when I was physically present at the grocery store. I could trust my brain to remember to pick up the book a colleague had wanted to borrow just before heading out of the house.
My brain was super trustworthy. I never had to write anything down, and I got by just fine.
This happened even in my job as a Project and a Program Manager. There would be beautiful and perfect plans for the project. But neither I nor the team referred to them for execution. We would always execute, going with the next thing that needed to be done, and I would retrospectively update the plans for project updates.
My brain worked fine. I could remember and get things done. Until I couldnât.
One day, I was in the middle of a sentence during a project status update when I forgot the critical information I was going to discuss. I froze midway through the meeting. I was going through a period of extended stress, and my short-term memory had become dangerously unreliable.
In the subsequent years, I experienced similar events not once but many times until I learnt that the brainâs primary purpose is not what I thought it wasâmemory.
Memory has been a glorified function of the brain, based on which we measure our cognitive and functioning ability. If we start forgetting things, we worry if we are showing signs of Dementia or early onset Alzheimerâs.
If we meet someone with an excellent memory storage and recall function, we label that person a genius. But indeed, what makes that person a âgeniusâ is the ability to discern information that is needed, eliminate what is not required, and use it to move ahead in their work.
Try this simple exercise if you thought the human brain was designed to record everything accurately and objectively.
Take a sheet of paper and draw an everyday object, such as your watch or phone, without looking at it.
For the second attempt, take a few minutes to look at your phone carefully, set it aside, and draw it again.
For the final attempt, keep your phone in front of you, look at it, and draw it again, making corrections and adjustments and adding detail.
The three renditions of the same phone, an everyday object we look at a zillion times, vary.
The brainâs purpose is not to hold or record things accurately. It is a pattern-making machine. It embraces similarities across events and situations and stores them.
So, if we try to use our brain to contain all the information, tasks, things to do, things to remember, and habits to cultivate, it is not possible.
It is said that we have at least 60,000 thoughts per day. This is in addition to all the information we consume on social media, the internet, emails, conversations and ruminations. If you add to trying to use your brain to contain everything about your work, it will lead to procrastination, burnout and exhaustion.
One way to work with this is to outsource the remembering task of the brain.
Write things down.
Well, I am sure you tried it before, and it didnât work. The brain will trust the writing system only when it is reliable.
This means it has to know that you can access the system or the place you use to store the information on demand.
I used to write bits of information on various Post-it notes, notebooks, Google Docs, sticky notes apps, notes apps, Whatsapp, and everywhere else!
When I needed the information, I would have to search through 10 different places and still not find it when I needed it. That was one reason why I stopped writing things down.
But when I streamlined my âcapturing informationâ down into two places – my Excel sheet for tasks, the reminder app on my phone for tasks, and the Notes app for information, I was able to have a better handle on and access to the information I needed at the time I wanted access to it. That freed my brain from constantly thinking, âOh, I am sure I am missing somethingâ.
Of course, there is a lot more to this than just a simple capture mechanism for all the information going around. But to begin with, any system needs to be reliable.
Do you write things down in the same place and look at it again? Do you have a designated âinboxâ that is reliable for storing all your important information, thoughts, tasks, and decisions?
Siri, say đvia email or LinkedIn
Work With Me
If youâd like to boost your productivity, reduce your overwhelm and gain more sanity from your work and life, I invite you to book a 30 minute, âno-obligationâ discovery session with me.
From my reading list
ICYMI: Perfection and Procrastination can go hand-in-hand. It is time to break the myth of perfection. (Being Sane)
Books: I have read too many serious non-fiction books this year, so I am shaking up my reading and started on this intriguing novel, Yellowface by R.F.Kuang.
