My dead simple system for not forgetting literally everything
For years, I have had a troubled relationship with remembering things. In fact, I have been particularly bad at it.
For years as an undergraduate or medical student, it felt like I had an absolute amount of information - tasks, and to-do lists, primarily - that I could retain before something important slipped through the cracks of my mind. When my focus was singular, I had no issues remembering everything that I needed to. But as soon as I had to multi-task my memory, important things were forgotten. If I had my academic life together, I forgot everything related to my social life. If I had my social life together, I forgot my academic assignments.
This relationship was acceptable - although less-than-ideal - as a student but became a problem as I transitioned to my surgical residency. Forgetting was not an acceptable excuse. Managing a busy schedule of clinical responsibilities, operating room schedules, coordinating patient care, teaching, and research opportunities without a reasonable system for remembering things made my life unbearably stressful. And things occasionally fell through the cracks. My subsequent (recent) foray into the corporate world was no different.
At the time, I never quite understood that committing your brain to the unnatural task of storing information only to retrieve it when needed introduces a certain degree of micro stress into your day. While small, when these compound (when many things must be remembered) it can lead to an untenable amount of daily stress. For my part, I felt like I was constantly running through and combing over and prioritizing the tasks that I had to remember for the next day and beyond which ended up being incredibly stressful. This stress could have, and should have, been outsourced.
This concept has been a point of insecurity and stress for me until I (recently) ran across a quote by David Allen in Tiago Forte’s book, “Building a Second Brain.”
The quote goes, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”
This quote totally revolutionized the way I approach my mind. Maybe the reason that I was so “bad” at remembering things wasn’t that I was innately untalented in some irreparable way, but that I wasn’t moving with the natural rhythms of my mind. I was trying to move against the grain. The human mind is a creative engine and is not particularly good at rote memorization and recall. Computers are date storage and recall tools at their core. Why shouldn’t we outsource the stress of rote recall to a computer?
So, in an attempt to outsource this stress, I made a stupidly-simple system for remembering the big and small things in my life.
For this task, I use the “Reminders” app on iPhone. There are many tools that can be used for this purpose, but this one is mine.
I have two rules for the reminder that I set for myself:
The reminder must be targeted
The reminder must be immediately actionable
A “targeted” reminder is one that pops up when it makes the most sense for me to immediately do that task. The app has a lot of nice tools for these purposes - i.e., scheduling a reminder for a certain date and time, sending a reminder when you arrive at a certain location, or even sending a reminder when you are messaging a certain person, etc. I like to keep it simple and just schedule reminders at the right date and time for me to complete a task. If I need to remember to bring a textbook to work, I schedule the reminder for when I am about to leave for work. If I have to remember to say certain things at a meeting, I write it in a reminder and have it prompt me 5 minutes prior to that meeting. I use this system extensively; the potential uses are numerous.
An immediately actionable reminder is pretty self-explanatory. If a reminder is not immediately actionable, and action is not immediately taken, I found that this system becomes a glorified to-do list. I don’t want another to-do list in my life. So, to make this system effective, I have made a deal with myself that I must act upon a reminder I have previously set for myself immediately.
The effect this system had on my life is glorious. Outsourcing remembering has, first, ensured less things slipped through the cracks. Cool, but much more importantly, the number of micro stresses in my life has decreased considerably. You don’t realize the number of things that cause you stress until you are no longer stressed by them. Now, I feel like I have a perfectly effective assistant who is inside my head at all hours delivering me perfectly-formulated and perfectly-time reminders.
This system is low-risk and, minimally, worth a try to see how you like it.
Thanks so much for reading. I had a ton of fun writing this blog post. It’s kind of nice to write about something a little more personal in this forum. Please let me know if you have any additional feedback for me - would love to start the conversation about this new system that I have implemented in my own life. Feel free to reach out to me with any comments or questions.
