Taking Notes

Today, I wanted to talk about how writing or taking notes can be helpful to you, just as it has helped me. I was never someone who wrote or took notes. I always thought I could rely on my mind to remember things and stay organized, but that didn’t always work. It was like a vicious cycle of "I need to do this," and then I'd completely forget about it. I tried taking notes before, but it never worked. I'd grab my phone and start overthinking how to organize the notes, ending up writing nothing at all.

So, for a long time, I simply didn’t organize anything — I kept everything in my head and didn’t write anything down. It wasn’t terrible, to be fair. It actually worked for a while, and that’s how I managed things for quite some time. However, recently, as my responsibilities have increased, that way of operating just stopped working.

But then, I saw a friend of mine mention that her therapist recently asked her to start a journal, and she said it helped her a lot to organize her thoughts. I also saw a video of a guy talking about how a pocket notebook changed his life. So, I decided to combine those ideas and make something work for me in my own way. The idea was to get a notebook and just write everything down, without worrying about organizing topics or anything like that. I would simply write down what I had to do and my thoughts, which varied from happiness to sadness, anger, and so on. The only "rule" was to put a checkbox next to the tasks, like for example:

• [ ] Walk the dog
• [x] Do college work

But aside from that, it was all just whatever came to my mind, without any organizational filter.

And the result? Incredible! I feel like my productivity has greatly improved. Obviously, it didn’t increase by 100%, but it was a significant difference. It’s amazing how many things I wrote down and had forgotten, but I remembered just by rereading my completely random notes and then simply completing the tasks I had forgotten.

With this strategy, it’s perfect for jotting down various ideas and gathering them all in one place, just like on this blog! This entire post was written from many ideas I jotted down over the week and then organized into one big text.

And the tasks, it could be a simple task or something more complicated, but I wrote everything down. That was the spirit. Also, the fact that I checked the boxes (at least for me) gave me a sense of accomplishment, like I was playing a game. Every time I finished a task, I felt a small victory.

Maybe it sounds kind of obvious, like, of course if you write things down, you'll be more organized. But like I said, it's not like I never tried. I did, a few times, but it just didn’t work for me. I ended up feeling "satisfied" with the mess and gave up on trying. Plus, the people around me didn’t use that kind of stuff either, so why should I?

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a notebook. It could be your phone, if that works better for you. Personally, I don’t like using my phone for this anymore (actually, I’m starting to hate it — but that’s a topic for another day). I’m also not saying you have to follow my exact method. The key is: just write it down. No fear, no pressure to make everything perfect. If you find a simple system that makes sense to you, it will work.

This blog post is a bit off the usual pattern, but it’s something I’m really proud of, and I wanted to share it. I hope it helps you in some way as well.

Thank for reading and,

Bye