The Pros and Cons of Writing Things Down, and the Six Blog Posts that Won’t Happen (Probably)

One key GTD principle is that if you have a thought that you want to act on, but which you can’t act on right away, you write it down. You then process it later along with the rest of the stuff in your inbox (or capture tool).

I am a big believer in that principle. And I also see that it has a slight down side: the more ideas you write down, the more time you have to spend processing them — thus taking time away from literally doing things (or just doing nothing).

As a result, sometimes I try to have a very tight filter over what I actually write down when it comes to actionable ideas. But this also has a trade-off: some of those ideas don’t come back, and if they are good, that means they won’t happen.

Maybe in some way or another the best of them end up coming back (though it is interesting that David Allen observed once that “if you have to have the same thought twice, that’s inefficient”).

However, I think that there are at least six such ideas that probably won’t. For over the weekend I had about six really good (in my opinion!) ideas for blog posts which, in my desire to save time and not overwhelm myself with input, I didn’t write down. (Plus, I was also outside — although that’s no excuse, because I am now using Jott for iPhone as my capture tool.)

Now, they are gone — I cannot remember them at all. The one thing I do remember about them is that they pertained to current, ad hoc observations on certain things — examples of productivity problems and how to deal with them, and so forth. Their ad hoc nature is probably one of the main reasons that I can’t remember what they are anymore. There is one other thing I remember about them, I guess — I found them interesting (though maybe I forgot them becasuse you wouldn’t have!).

Regardless, here we see an immediate, real-life example of the pros and cons of writing things down (or not)!

March 22, 2009 | Filed Under Productivity | 2 Comments

Comments

2 Responses to “The Pros and Cons of Writing Things Down, and the Six Blog Posts that Won’t Happen (Probably)”

Eric on March 23rd, 2009 8:24 am

I agree that it can be a time waster to stock your inbox with every actionable thought that you have. This is because oftentimes we process a thought the second we have a thought. Your example of the blog post ideas is perfect. When you have a thought “that would be a good blog post” it is already processed. If you write it down and put it in your inbox, you are wasting time because you are actually reprocessing it.

I overcome this problem by using Notebook for iPhone (syncs with Toodledo.com) to capture thoughts. You can store tons of lists and sublists. For example, I may have an idea for a blog post, a date with my wife, a movie to rent, etc. I have lists for these things in Notebook, and can add them immediately, because as soon as I have the thought, I know what to do with it. I review these lists as a part of my weekly review.

Of course, there are other good thoughts that I do not know what to do with, and it may take more than 2 minutes for me to figure that out. Those go in the inbox to be processed later.
Brian Current on March 23rd, 2009 10:52 am

Matt, was one of your post ideas about filing!? …just kidding…

but, it comes down to filing for me. i have the habit, (maybe a bad habit), of typing my ideas on a word doc, saving it and then ending up with many word docs categorized by subject.

This works only when i remember to check back on my word docs to see what i wrote. Often i have Zero memory of having jotted down a particular note!

also, thanks to another commenter here, i’ve started using Dial2Do which i find helpful when i’m in the car and can’t type anything in Word.