Your Memory Sucks, So Write It Down.
Knowledge is power. Information is the most valuable currency that humans have. Society is built on the sustained acquisition, utilization, and distribution of said information.
"We stand on the shoulders of giants" is one of my favorite quotes. We're not just standing on giants, though. We all stand here today, in the wake of multiple industrial revolutions and the greatest prosperity the species has ever seen, because billions of people, collectively, contributed to the advancement of the species through their thoughts and actions, passing down knowledge from generation to generation.
There's a fundamental problem, though, that hangs like a dark cloud over mankind's potential for advancement. That problem is that humans are pretty terrible at remembering anything.
Not just pretty terrible, actually. Astonishingly bad. We forget 99.9% of the information we process on a daily basis. That's not an exaggeration - let me demonstrate with an example. Food is pretty memorable, right? People love food. You can remember every meal you've had in the past 48 hours pretty easily. But most people can't list off everything they ate last week. Try this: from the top of your head, try to recall every meal you ate last year for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and write it down, in order. Unless they were special events, or you eat the same thing every day, it's impossible to do this accurately as a normal ol' human being.
Recall the questions and answers on all your high school exams. Recite a single page from any of the books you've read before. Recall every conversation you had with your partner on your first date together. I hope you get my point. Accurately recalling anything is extremely hard.
"Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them" —David Allen
As an entrepreneur, you are probably bombarded with an insane amount of information - all of which is seemingly important. Ideas, tasks, and plans for your business, however, are not special in your mind. If you don't pay special attention to your ideas and give them the permanence they deserve, they fade from your memory just as fast as the meal you ate last week. What we remember from day to day is what we're reminded of regularly - the problem there is being reminded. If nothing reminds you about that brilliant idea you had in the shower this morning, you're going to lose it. It seems clear to you now because you spent 10 minutes staring at the bathroom wall getting excited over all the new possibilities this will have for your business. It doesn't matter though. If you don't take action on it, or write it down, it'll gone by next week.
If you let those ideas fade to the back of your mind without having explored it, made an actionable task from it, or cached it for pondering it at a later time, you're being intellectually wasteful. You might as well have not thought of that idea at all. So do something with that idea when it comes to you. Take out your phone and jot it down. If you have time, think about the pros and cons. Think about risks. Think about alternatives. Write that all out. Make it a task. Schedule something for it. If nothing else, a single sentence will help you recall what you were thinking about when you come back to this note with more time, weeks, months, or even years down the line. Thoughts and memories fade, but writings are eternal (for the most part).
Whatever you write in your notebook is a time travelling message that you are sending to your future self.
Assume that you forget whatever you don't write down, because you will. The scariest thing about memory is that you can't remember what you don't remember. So if it's important, write it down.
Note: Thanks for reading, this is the first time I've ever written an article to post to the nets, so I'm sure my writing skills have a long, long way to go. I'm building a note taking app, so this topic is near and dear to me. Hopefully I was able to communicate the importance of writing things down, and has encouraged you to record more of your thoughts in the interest of being more effective in your work.
Love your approach and design. I'm using workflowy at the moment, but will check out your project later.
Yessssss totally agree with your idea. This is also our aim when creating SaveDay, a tool that can help you save and consume knowledge better. You guys can check out our website and give us feedback to better improve our tool!!!
Our web: https://www.save.day/?utm_source=ih&utm_medium=comment&utm_campaign=27sep
Writing thoughts down on paper / mobile also helps with sleeping
Thanks for the post!
A dumb question... what is the software of the capture?
It's the program I'm working on, Aster. It's still in its early stages but you can check it out here:
https://aster.page
Love it! Super clean and minimal. Grid concept is cool.
This is so helpful! I struggle with remb erring things and it can be frustrating. I'll definitely make writing things down a habit now.
As an engineer/marketer, I always create white papers after analyzing or researching something! That's a good approach for me.
This is absolutely true. Especially as a person with ADHD, having an external memory source is incredibly important.
True, whenever I get idea I stop whatever I'm doing and write it down on my notepad. this comes very handy because you don't have to load your mind with information only to forget it later... so always makes sure to write it down :)
solid post! i completely agree with the importance of writing things down. it's amazing how easily we forget valuable ideas and insights. i have a Notion page specifically for jotting transient thoughts down immediately before they're gone
Very nice summary! As soon as you realize this and act on it, your productivity will skyrocket!
I started writing down things I had to do and things i wanted to do in Google Tasks, when they are lingering there I can get them out of my head for the time being and still make sure I will do them with a way higher chance, as if they are not written down.
Since I have quite a lot of ideas and thoughts while driving (and I'm commuting about 1,5 hours 4 times a week) I've been searching for a good way to write them down, without fiddling with my phone while driving.
Currently I'm working on a small WebApp that I can open in the cars Browser, that lets me speech to text notes/tasks, that then get synced to my Google Tasks, without having to authenticate every time I sit in my car.
Hey -- thanks for the piece. For me, I think the trick is being mindful about what's worth writing down to remember later and using precisely the fact that my memory sucks to winnow through my ideas. The theory is: if they're good enough, I'll either remember them, or the thing that nudged me to have the thought will happen again. It's a good theory, but hard to say if it actually works. Given the uncertainties, I've taken to writing more and more things down.
I am all against writing things down. It is pretty much useless in the age of information. It might be very important for ancient times as not writing = lost the knowledge but nowadays we have the luxury of getting information on our fingertips, so why bother writing down. It is better to focus on what is being said or taught.
One more thing is a useful knowledge is the one that you can apply in real life and the one that can be applied is the one that you already understand and don't need notes for it.
Anyway it just my opinion but I love your article. I am making an automated seo research tool where you just need to specify your niche and target audience and the tool will return the best topic and keywords to rank higher in search.
For example for this article you can input , writing and blogging as the niche and put students as target audience.
The tool will research google seo and give you the best topic and keywords to rank higher and get more click by your potential audience.
If you interested can checkout creativeblogtopic.com
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I did consider this. Search is a very powerful tool, and with the recent advancements in AI, I wondered whether keeping any sort of manually managed information is necessary anymore.
I think it is, though. Search requires a query which means I need to be the first mover. I need to recall something to search something.
Not everything can be understood at first glance, and having notes about the topic keeps the important things around in working memory long enough for it to eventually stick. But nothing sticks forever, and those notes will always be there if you need to relearn it.
I wanted to check out your site btw but your link is broken :)
I absolutely loved what I just read! 📚 It was so engaging and well-written. I couldn't put it down. Thank you for sharing such a wonderful piece!" 😊👏 #GreatReads #Impressed #Thankful
Those are very kind words. Thank you!
+1 for advocating writing things down, even when the connects or structure isn't there immediately. I've been doing this with inboxes -- one digital (Apple Notes) and one analog (Bullet Journal).
I love the aesthetic of bullet journals. It's one of my inspirational sources in terms of the simplicity and aesthetics. I hope to replicate similar patterns digitally in Aster, but analog is always dependable.
Cool post. Tangentially related: on the subject of remembering things, I've used spaced repetition for years. I have several decks of flashcards, and I manually add everything from words in a new language I'm learning to random ideas I don't want to forget.
The awesome thing about a SRS (I use Anki, by the way) is that it's a hack to make sure those neural pathways stay strong enough that you don't forget the thing in question via regular attempts to recall it. Works as well for language as it does ideas and anything else you want to ensure stays floating around those grey cells :)
Thanks for the post and good luck with Aster.
Thank you! Spaced repetition is indeed a powerful tool for memory. I don't have a need for Anki nowadays, but keeping pinned notes has been powerful for making sure neural pathways remain strong for things I do want to remember.