When I was in middle school, I had a dilemma. It was Christmas time, and I was deep into the Ghirardelli chocolates. My stomach was full, but I wanted to save a square of chocolate for later.
Knowing I was about to go hang out with a friend, I decided to save the chocolate for later. I slid it in the front pocket of my sweatpants.
A few hours later while at my friend’s house, I found a nice surprise. I reached my hand into my pocket to discover what felt like a warm slime. The chocolate had melted and seeped through the wrapper.
I wasn’t mad about no longer having chocolate to eat. More so that is stained my pants. But today’s lesson isn’t about chocolate; it’s about dealing with information overwhelm.
If you’re someone who always has 100 tabs peeping at you on your computer, Building a Second Brain is a must-read.
To be more organized, the author suggests organizing all of your notes into four main folders. It’s called the PARA method:
Projects
Resources
Areas of Improvement
Archives
Towards the end of your day, put any links from your open tabs into notebooks under these four folders. You won’t believe the sense of relief after quitting out of Chrome or Safari. It feels like the wave of relief after finishing final exams.
The key lesson from the book is this: store information where your future self can find it. Remember, you’re busy and probably always will be. You won’t remember where you put something, especially if you don’t need the insight right now for the projects you’re working on. You could search your notes app, but you might not remember what it’s even called. You might capture a cool idea but not know how to use it in the future.
Let’s say that’s a quote from a book. You might make a “Book Notes” folder on your notes app. That’s great but not sufficient. After that, sort the quotes or ideas into themes that come up. If you’re honest with yourself, you won’t ever really have the time to read your book notes (trust me). You’re more likely to find the insights when you need inspiration on a certain topic. Some of my biggest themes to sort ideas around are education, travel, beliefs, honesty, and cities.
As we saw with the chocolate, where you store it matters for your future self. If you don’t organize ideas by where your future self will most easily access them, the insights and information melt away like the chocolate in your pocket.
Create a project. If that’s what you’re working on and have an idea, file it there. If you’re working on improving some area of your life (ie finance), put the article in Areas. If not there, then put it in Resources, which is usually where most of my ideas go (ie quotes to use for the category of beliefs).
If I was most concerned about my future self and not staining my pants, I probably would’ve stored that chocolate somewhere that wasn’t so warm. Same with ideas and notes: keep your future ignorant self in mind. He’s still busy and probably will forget why you saved something in the first place.
For more ideas about organizing yourself, be sure to check out Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. Fantastic book that might give you the sense of relief you’ve deep down wanted but didn’t know how to get. Say bye to always having tabs open.
Happy Sunday,
Baxter
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