182. 2 Reasons to Trade Remembering for Writing

All right, so last week we had an episode that talked about confessions that people can make to help themselves and their accountability in the goal setting process. This week I want to begin the episode with a confession myself, and then I’m going to ask you, what is the most important thing that you’ve forgotten? For me, I have become terrible at remembering birthdays. And when I say birthdays, that includes my mother, other family members who are important, but yet I continue to forget their birthdays. Now, Facebook, yes, has been somewhat of a help, but it has not gotten me to the point to where I take the extra effort to remember it for myself, because if I don’t log into Facebook for a couple of days, I’m back to square one, forgetting a very important birthday.

This one doesn’t exactly apply, but last week during my weekly preview, I realized that my husband was going to be out of town that week, and so thankfully my weekly preview saved me. But that was about to be a big problem in my life. I would say there are times where I show up to work and I don’t have a computer, and that’s happened to me a couple of times, and it is painful. I don’t know why that makes me so incredibly angry. If y’all want to actually see me be the Hulk conversion of Courtney, just have me forget my computer at home and just see what happens.

Now we’re all trying to picture the Hulk version. When Courtney goes green. Yeah.

The first time I got to know the wonderful folks of the Franklin City, the Williamson County Police Department was when I was driving with my dear family along some country road there in Franklin, and I got pulled over and was confused. Didn’t think I was speeding or anything like that, but I probably was. Maybe I was going a little over. And the cop knocks on the window, roll it down and he said registration, whatever. And he says, “Hey, your tags on your plate have expired.” And I was thinking, “Oh, that’s right. I probably didn’t do it.” And I’m thinking, you know what, I probably missed the thing in the mail, or I didn’t write it down, or something like that and maybe he’ll let me off. Because I knew. This has happened before, I won’t tell you how many times. I remember the last time I was pulled over, it was for the same reason, this time in Nashville. And he’s like, “Just go get it taken care of. It had expired like the previous month or something like that.

And so I was like, “Hey, could you let me off with this one? You see I have a crying child in the backseat.” And he said, “Well, normally I would let people off with a warning, but sir, it’s October 2021 and this expired in February of 2020. It’s been a while.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh.”

So I paid. There’s a sidewalk that has a repaired crack in it, I suppose, in Franklin, because of what I got to pay the city for that mistake and what I forgot there. Now, in my defense, there was a lot going on for 2020 and 2021. It was kind of busy, but yeah that was funny.

Save it for the judge, Blake. Save it for the judge.

Have I talked on the podcast about when I got pulled over? I have, haven’t I. I got pulled over for only the second time. It was the first time I’d ever gotten a speeding ticket and I did not have my license or registration. [inaudible 00:04:01].

And you were driving a stolen vehicle.

And I had a stolen vehicle. It was a problem. It is painful when we forget those things, and I think we as a culture, we have a tendency to be overconfident about what we can actually remember. I feel like I have been absolved of this personally because of said situations and said small children in home that constantly reminds you that you should not be overconfident about what you can remember.

But I think in a meeting sometimes it’s easy to be like, I’ll remember what happened in that meeting later, or I’ll remember the date of that event, or I’ll remember to put this registration and insurance card in my glove compartment. But I think that’s where we have to kind of transition from trusting our memories less. Maybe we don’t have the memory we had at 22, for a myriad of reasons, and trust our pens more.

I would say I have definitely leaned into this more and more. Everything that comes up in a meeting that’s a to-do list for me or something that has to be followed up, I am putting it in my planner as soon as possible. But today we’re going to be talking about capturing important details of our lives and storing them in a way that’s going to help you be your brain, help you remember these things without you having to store them and count on your brain.

Welcome to another episode of Focus On This. This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so you can banish your distractions, get the right stuff done, and finally start loving Mondays. I’m Verbs, here with Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton. Happy Monday to you all.

Happy Monday.

Happy Monday unto you, Verbs.

Yes. Thank you, sir. So, all this talk about how to not forget, why is it important that we actually pick up the pen and write things down?

The first reason, Verbs, is it creates clarity. Picking up a pen and writing creates clarity. There’s this quote that says, “Thoughts disentangle themselves passing over the lips and through pencil tips.” Now, that’s great for a couple reasons. One, because it’s absolutely true, when we verbalize something or write something down, it clears our mind. And two, it rhymes a little bit there at the end, and so that’s fun.

There they are again, that great international prolific author, anonymous, the one who came up with that quote. Accreditation due.

In seriousness. This is the reason I journal so much. It’s one of the advantages of writing, specifically writing with a physical pen. The frustration with it is also the benefit of it, which is it takes longer. And there’s something about writing it down that, as you’re doing it, you start to figure stuff out about it. It’ll sear in your brain a little bit, but the actual act of writing takes that extra second that I think, as Courtney says, it gets out of your head. So it creates that clarity and that space, and you can feel it almost physically leaving your head, where it’s not a safe place to keep that idea, and putting it into a planner that is a safe, trusted place that can store that idea.

They’ve done research on note-taking, especially on college students and stuff. I don’t want to brag, but my greatest skill is my ability to type very quickly. It’s something that if I’m having a bad day, take a typing test and be like, man, I’m so good at this. But when I was in undergrad, when I was in grad school, you-

Nick, you got to edit that out, man. You got to take that out.

Why? It’s the best. I’ll do one today. So anyway, but they’ve done this research where they’ve shown that if you see people and they’re in classes with these laptops and they’re tip tapping away. When I was in grad school, it became popular to have a shared Google Doc where everybody would take notes together on what was happening in class. But what they found is actually that writing your notes by hand is better for your retention, because since you can’t type anywhere close to the speed of thought, you’re having to sort of editorialize and compartmentalize and translate big ideas into things that your brain can hold onto and then refer to later.

Writing by hand is the best. And honestly, in addition to the Full Focus system, the paper planner, the central meat of it is just going, I need somewhere that will force me to think through all these things. So that’s another unsolicited pro writing, pro pencil pitch.

Well, and I think one thing you said there that’s really important is something that you can refer to later. The pain of looking at a note that you can’t distinguish what in the world you were thinking of in that moment. What is this? I have no idea what I was talking about. That pain actually forces you in the moment of when you have something to write down, of what is important, what’s the deadline, who should know about this, thinking through those in real time so that your future self doesn’t hate your current self. And it, again, just helps you have clarity around what it is that you need to accomplish.

You know how your phone will do location based reminders if you tell it? Like your iPhone. I’m sure Android does it too. Apparently back in like 2016, I tried to leave a note on my phone from when I was leaving my friend’s parents’ house, and so every time I… They have a pool there, so we’ll go there, and so every time I leave that house, I get a notification that just says, bring on it. I don’t know. Every time. And I go, what [inaudible 00:10:51] do I need to bring? What was it? And I just leave it there in case I remember it someday, because it seems important.

I’m glad to hear y’all do that. Well, at least Nick does it too. Of you write a task list or a note to follow up on and then you’re like, what is this? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

And like you were saying, I mean, Courtney, it’s important writing it down and then if we’re going to write it down, we’re in this intentional mode of capturing it on paper. If we’re going to capture it, it’s worth capturing it well, that way that simple act of writing could help us remember even better, even if you don’t really go back and return to your notes to consult with it. Which leads us to reason number two. For future reference.

For future reference. We want to write stuff down to reference later. This is huge. I’m reminded of the David Allen quote where he said, “The mind is for having ideas, not for holding them.” To have a system set up where you can get stuff out of your head, but know that it’s safe, know that you can return back to it to reference it when you need it, is so powerful.

I think this has obviously an effect on just, hey, I remembered that birthday, or I remembered to update my registration for my car, if you’re me. But there’s some deeper emotional and psychological effects of this as a practice as well. One, your stress level, or just that latent anxiety of, maybe I’m forgetting something, over time as you practice this, goes down.

The second is that your sense of self-trust, your personal integrity has a value. It’s not just something you say, I want to have integrity, you’re actually creating integrity in yourself by creating that system of referencing, creating that process of, I can write stuff down and I’ll check back on it. That development of self-trust is really powerful. So you’re kind of boosting your own energy and emotional state from both angles. One, because you’re not as worried about stuff falling through the cracks, and two, because you’re learning to trust yourself more and more.

I feel like I want to do a mic drop for you.

Yeah, that was worthy.

The self-trust is so key and so brilliant.

No, you do have a mic there, Courtney. No, I don’t know how expensive this thing is.

Yeah, that is true. I’m pretty sure if I even look at that mic wrong, Nick is going to get onto me, because it’d be like-

Can you imagine if you’re listening, you’re driving, and then there’s just a huge sound of a gugong. Just really startled people. Oh, gosh.

[inaudible 00:13:43].

Oh, man, that’s the worst.

Did that work?

Sure did.

Did y’all hear that? Oh, sorry, that was my mic drop.

The note that I would add to this when we’re talking about future reference is obviously that self-trust is needed, but it’s also having the mechanism of when you’re going to refer back to the things that you’ve written. And so part of your weekly preview process, honestly this is one of the reasons I love it so much, is it has the mechanism in place for me to refer back through the week of all my notes or open to-do list, and it gives me that moment of, again, self-trust, because I have the time to do that and account for those items. Either move them into the week ahead, move them into a different task management system, delegate them. It gives me a process for doing those things. So if you feel like that’s something you struggle with and you aren’t using the weekly preview, definitely check that out. Or maybe that’s a section you skip. It’s really helpful to make these notes really work for you.

Hey, guys, I am here with Conor Scholes, one of our Full Focus planner certified pros. And Conor, say hi to the Focus On This audience and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Hello, my name is Conor Scholes. I am a worship pastor full-time in the Kansas City area, actually at a church that has two campuses. So we have a campus at Independence and Blue Springs, which are kind of suburbs of Kansas City. So I always just say Kansas City Metro because that’s makes a lot more sense. And I guess Patrick Mahomes has kind of made that, put it on the map, so that helps too.

I am so curious from somebody that is a creative, I know a lot of times when you think of maybe people that are naturally a planner, maybe naturally like perfectionistic, your mind doesn’t necessarily go straight to creatives. And so I love talking to Nick, our producer, as well on this topic of, how does somebody that maybe you wouldn’t naturally think this tool is going to be really helpful for, and it actually is, and how you use it in a role like yours. So I’d love for you to talk a little bit about that, and if you have any tips that would help people in a more creative field.

Obviously, I am not naturally just organized. That’s not the way I like to be. I’m very much that free personality that’s like, hey, let’s do this. That’s how I’m built. But with that being said, especially in a situation where we have two campuses on a week to week basis, I’m dealing with a lot of volunteers who all have their own schedules and commitments, and so one of the things when our church… Actually, we had a merge five years ago that we began to have two campuses, it became very clear to me that I was going to have to be able to handle the administration side of that. And so I think on a monthly basis, I have about 75 unique volunteers that serve, and so I needed to be able to communicate to them and, at the same time, not go insane being a creative who felt like all I was doing was ticking boxes like that.

Actually about three years ago, I started just the whole do three things a day. What three things do I need to accomplish? And that’s great, except if you don’t write them down, you don’t know if you’ve done them. You think you’ve done them, and then somebody’s like, “Yeah, you haven’t done anything.” And so for me, the act of writing it down makes a huge difference.

One of the reasons I started using Full Focus was, one, it had the whole idea of three things a day that you need to really get done, and then the rest is gravy. And for me, that’s important because sometimes I just need to get those three things done and know that I’ve accomplished them, and then it allows me to have the freedom then to flex my muscles in the creative realm.

So one of the things that I found was my head was full of a lot of thoughts and I need to get them out. So actually in line with the Full Focus planner, every day I journal out thoughts. I would say probably one of the unique ways that I use the planner is that I don’t use that little calendar function as a thing to show my appointments, I use that as a way to hold myself accountable. So I write down everything that I did, whether it’s good or bad, and I can go back and I can say, hey, I wasted those two hours today, maybe next time I need to schedule that a little better so I don’t waste it.

That’s a really great tip. That’s very interesting, kind of using it as a way to see not what you’re planning for the day, but what actually happened as kind of a factual source of evaluating, getting better, of like, hey, what worked, what didn’t work. Especially probably when you come to your weekly preview, it’s nice to look at those and use it as a tool to improve from. That’s a really interesting tip. I like that.

And one of the things that it’s helped me do is realize either when I’ve made improvements there, like I’ve made improvements in managing my time or to look and see where’s the best place to create time, create margin to be creative. Because one of the things for a creative is you have to be intentional about your time that you’re going to write, or your time that you’re going to think, whatever version of creativity you have.

For me, I block out my Thursday mornings to be very creative, and I try to make sure that I don’t have any meetings there to do that with. And so that is my time to write. For me, in this last year, I’ve become pretty conversational in Spanish, and one of the ways that I did that was by having coffee for an hour with someone who spoke Spanish every Thursday, and we just spoke in Spanish. And that has really helped. But that wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t planning out my time to be able to do that.

So many times I’ve heard from creatives, it’s like your natural desire is, I’d love to just be able to freely pursue whatever I’m thinking of or whatever creative aspiration I want to go after. But actually that whenever they’ve had that in their life, their actual, their creativity has gone down. But it was actually in the times where they had the constraints that provided the creative time when they were the most creative. And I’m just curious to hear y’all’s thoughts on that.

So I look at creativity like a budget. We don’t like budgets in finances a lot of times, but budgets are actually what gives us the ultimate freedom. So for me as a creative, the times that I am doing my best work are when I am cutting out time to be consistent, and so that consistency breeds the results.

When it comes to writing, for example, if I’m writing every week, then I’m going to have a lot of material to record from. But if I don’t cut out that time to write, then I’m not going to write, and then I’m ultimately not going to be able to share that.

When I was living in St. Louis and I was just like a guy who was creative, and then I went and lived in San Francisco for maybe five months, which was great, beautiful city, and suddenly, immediately, I was in LA and then San Francisco, people were like, “Well, you’re a creative, of course.” They’ve suddenly given this title, and sometimes I think to myself, is that real? Is this actually that different than how everybody else lives their life? This idea that somehow… It feels great. I’m a four on the Enneagram, so they say, and one of the things about the four is that they love to be an individual. They love to be special.

That is true. I think that’s true for everybody too, as well. But I do wonder. It’s so funny, this is a little askew of maybe the point, but that’s all true. I’ve been the most creative when I have set aside time to be creative, and I have limited it and asked a lot of myself in return, to go, by the end of this, you’re going to have done X and you’re going to love it. And if you give yourself… I made a podcast, Shame Rule, and that took years, and eventually I had to go like, I need to finish this. I need to set it, and this is when it goes live and this is what’s happening.

I hate that. I hate that.

So anyway, yes, to all of that, but also I would be remiss if I didn’t say that there’s something about the creatives idea that makes me feel like, are we just full of baloney?

Nick, you just stepped on my… Actually I had a business called Practicing Creativity, and the whole philosophy was that everybody is actually creative. When I write a strategy document, I’m creative. It’s just culturally, we associate music, art, we associate certain things as being creative versus not creative. And we probably all, even somebody in finance that does a really fancy formula that I wouldn’t have come up with, that is actually creativity.

We don’t want our finance people to get too creative with numbers, but I’m just saying, we all have that, and I think it is actually the practicing of it, that you two probably make more of an effort to practice it, your creativity, than maybe some of their people do, because you’ve taken on that identity. I do agree, if more of us took on that identity, I mean, it’s there in all of us, for sure.

Well, I mean, it happens everywhere. You have the creative financial solution, you have the creative parenting solution, you go, oh my gosh, I can’t believe you didn’t think of that. It exists all these places. And maybe because we’re talking about mind your mindset and the stories we tell ourselves and how that works, if perhaps people were to go, wow, I am creative, I solved that problem very creatively, they might take that on and then find themselves being more free to be creative in other ways just because the story they’re telling themselves is more accurate.

And vice versa. For Conor, he could say, I’m a creative, I don’t do the planning thing. And what you’re saying is, actually, you’ve taken that on of like, no, I can be creative and be a great planner, deliver a really great event with 75 volunteers. Which I know from personal experience is not the best group of people to manage.

There are times that it can be interesting. When I think of the idea of, especially in the last 20 years of ministry, there were times, yes, I was like, I’m a creative, I just don’t plan. I’m just going to be disordered. That’s just who I am. And I think you talk about taking on personalities. I think for me it’s not necessarily taking on the personality, it’s embracing the tension of what the world might see as irony. It’s okay to set aside time to do nothing. It’s okay to set aside time to think, to write, to stretch those muscles.

And then at the same time, like you said, I think everyone has creativity. I think of one of my friends who is an elegant coder. You can look at his computer programming code and it just looks pretty, and that’s an art form in itself. He would never call himself a creative, and yet, in my mind, I look at that and I’m like, that looks like poetry. It’s just numbers, but still.

I think that’s where, when you accept some of those boundaries in planning, it actually opens up the freedom. You can have a whole blank page as a creative, and it doesn’t mean that you’re going to accomplish anything just because you’re given total freedom. A lot of times the best way creative creates is when we do give ourselves some barriers and some guiderails just to bounce off of, because we need to bounce off of. I’m a little ADD, so I bounce off my guardrail and then I can get back on track.

That’s a really great word. And again, another great nod to the usage of a daily big three. Even if you have a full day, a side to say, I can do whatever, however I want to write, whatever I want to do, but using even just the daily big three actually will produce much better results in the end.

Can I quickly just say, to your point, Conor, this is my non planner tip, but it all works. There’s an author named Anne Lamott who wrote a little thing called… I’ll censor it. I’m going to say it, excuse my language. I’m going to censor it for the show. It’s called (beep) First Drafts, and the idea here, of course, is that you just have to get something down.

was doing this with my 13-year-old, he has a project for a class, he has to make a video, and he said, “This is…” I just said, “Just make a thing so then we can fix the thing. That’s all you have to do.” So for everyone who’s out there and you’re going, “I don’t know what to do,” it’s fine. Just make it as bad as possible and accept it and love it.

I have a friend, Michael Farren, who says, “Write the really bad songs so you can get to the good ones.”

Yeah, that’s right.

It’s a good word. Well, Conor, do you work with… I should’ve asked this before I started going. Do you work with certified pros or do you just kind of use it in your ministry?

I use it in my ministry. I haven’t branched out too much, but I have four or five folks that I work with just to help them in the same area, and so that’s one of the ways that I’ve reached out with it and I’ve used it. I would love to work with other pros, so if you want to, you can look me up and I’d love to talk to you about it.

Awesome. Well, Conor, thank you so much for joining us today. Again, if you are interested, maybe you’re in worship arts at a church or you’re a creative and you’re looking to work with a certified pro that has expertise in that area, you can find people like Conor that are experts in using the Full Focus planner and those applications.

Again, you can find all of our certified pros at fullfocus.co/directory. You’re going to look for our earners. Search in the earners. You also can find them in our Full Focus planner community on Facebook. Matter of fact, you could probably just ask a question, “Hey, is there a certified pro that’s worked in this industry?” And most likely you’re going to find someone. It’s a great way to expedite the results that you’re looking for, the things that you’re trying to pursue.

Conor, thank you so much for being with us. I so enjoyed this conversation and kind of a unique look at how you can use the Full Focus system. So thank you again for being with us.

Thank you. Thank you for letting me come on.

All right, today’s tip to level up your focus is to reflect on this question. In what situations am I most tempted to over-rely on my memory? Then ask yourself, where could I capture notes on these situations instead? Courtney just gave a great tip on where to do that, but we’ll leave it there.

Thanks for joining us on Focus On This.

This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so share it with your friends, and don’t forget to join the Full Focus planner community on Facebook. We’ll be back next Monday with another great episode. Until then, stay focused.

Stay focused.

Stay focused.

That was good.