Very less people in the world have eidetic or photographic memory, less than 100 according to this article. Its fair to say you and I aren’t one of those 100 people. These are the people capable of remembering things with a blink of an eye, never to forget. What they do with those memories is beside the point but they’re capable of something extra ordinary. Us on the other hand, are fortunate enough not remember details.
I say FORTUNATE because it goes us enough room in our mind to keep thoughts and memories we want to focus on and bring into action. A workbench if you’d like to put it that way. That’s a different story that we use our brain to accumulate shitty thoughts, embarrassing memories, failures and negativity. While our brain is busy thinking why our high five was rejected the other day that embarrassed us to the core, we often forget the things we’re suppose to focus on.
When you call a day non-productive, boring, tiring or disappointing, you’re actually describing what you haven’t accomplished in a day that you were supposed to. Because the dopamine boost that you’re body was supposed to release by the end of the day didn’t come through and now you’re feeling like shit. The problem isn’t a day that’s being spent incorrectly, its the day that was spent unorganized.
We all have a terrible memory when it comes to tasks, projects and to-dos for the day and we often don’t organize it in a fun way. One way that worked for me was to write stuff down. Even if I remember what I have to do for the day, I write it down on my diary. It helps our brain recognize it as ‘important’. Whatever you write registers in your brain as ‘important’. And we usually give attention to important things.
Before the point of this article goes all over the place, let me share some insights of how I was able to make my to-dos more fun, well organized, easy to clear out and have fun at the end of the day.
EVERY MORNING, when you’re at your desk and planning out the day. Start writing in your diary the below sections in due order.
- What are you grateful for: 3 Things you’re grateful for before starting the day
- Three People I’m going to reach out today: It could be clients, old friends you want to catchup with or connecting to new people.
- What I’m going to reward myself today: A little something that you’d like to give yourself at the end of the day, it could be an ice-cream treat, 15 mins of meditation, a nice hot shower, whatever gets your motor running.
- Tasks for the day: Remember, only the tasks which moves the needle in your business, career, project or life. I’ve talked more about it here on ‘What moves the needle‘. (Finally, I can quote my own articles, how cool is that :D)
- Allocate time for each task: Don’t just have your tasks linger around, put a specific start and end time on the task, if you couldn’t do it within the allocated time, then it wasn’t worth it. Schedule it for tomorrow or do a better job allocating time next time. You learn from mistakes anyways.
And there you have it, when you organize your day this way, you’d have something to look forward to, you’d find it challenging and fun to do your tasks and you’ll feel good at the end of the day.
There are many ways writing helps us get our thoughts right. Let it be to overcome stress or anger, get new ideas or articulate what you know. One of the few reasons why I started writing this blog in the first place.
Until tomorrow.
Artwork: https://dribbble.com/shots/7018677-Translation
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