Why do you need to use a diary?

Let’s consider the limitations on our short memory for a moment.

Psychological research tells us that we can only hold on average only 7 (plus or minus 2) pieces of information in our short term memory at a time. Your brain cannot handle too much information all at once.

In order for you to learn new information effectively in class it’s going to make a difference if you can reduce the demands on your memory/mind. You need to reduce your mental load.

How can you reduce your mental load?

By far the easiest way to reduce your mental load is by using your student diary/organiser. You will be able to learn more effectively in class if you take things out of your head (e.g. “English essay due on Thursday” and “Swim trials on Monday”) and dump them into your organiser.

Tips for using your diary

1. Treat your diary like your school pants – don’t go to school without it!

Think of your diary as being like your school pants or skirt. Would you leave home for school without wearing your school pants/skirt? Of course not, it would be ridiculous, incredibly embarrassing and stressful upon realising you were wearing no pants or skirt. In the same way, if you leave home without your diary and your teacher tells you to write something down in your diary and you don’t have it there with you, chances are you’re going to feel stressed out. If you don’t feel stressed out then you’ll most likely feel stressed out upon realising that you forget to do whatever the teacher told you to do (e.g. your assignment).

So bring your diary with you everywhere, every day!

2. Write it down then and there, or else forget it!

Imagine you’re in class and the teacher says to you “Your science project is due in on Friday the 19th of March”, what should you immediately do? Write it down!

Another limitation of your short term memory is that you can only hold information there for approximately 20 seconds. If you don’t write the information down then and there, chances are you’re going to forget it.

So a good strategy is to have you diary placed next to you on your desk open to the relevant day or week.

3. Use colours

This is a map of Japan’s railway system. For a moment, I want you to enjoy the pretty colours of the different railway tracks on this map.

Now, have a look at a black and white version of the same map. You’ll notice that it’s really hard to separate out each track. The railway system becomes very confusing and overwhelming.

Likewise, I recommend that you use different coloured pens in diary to represent the things you need to do for each of your subjects. This will be more exciting for your brain than black pen on white paper and you’ll know exactly what needs to be done for each of your different subjects.

4. Use prompts to avoid nasty surprises

Imagine that you’ve had a busy week at school (see image above) – your art and health projects have been handed in and you’ve successfully completed your maths test. The weekend arrives and you just want to relax, so you hang out with your friends and don’t touch a single text book all weekend.

Now imagine this – the weekend is over and it’s Monday morning. You’re getting ready for school and you take out your diary, turn to today’s page only to discover that you have an english assignment due in today that you haven’t started! You start to stress out. There is no way in the world that you’re going to be able to get it done in the next 20 minutes.

This scenario could have been avoided by simply giving yourself a reminder the previous week in your diary (see below).

Alternatively, if you had used a wall calendar you would have been able to see in one glance what was happening for the entire month. For $2 and a little effort filling everything in, a wall calender is well worth it.

Do you have any tips on how to use your diary more effectively? Let me know!

In some ways I think I was secretly proud of the fact that I was messy. After all, who would want to be clean and super organised? Wasn’t that for uptight people who had too much time on their hands? I just wasn’t inspired to live like that.

But people who were efficient and able to get things done, now they inspired me! I wanted to be like them and thankfully, David Allen’s book ‘How to get things done’ showed me how I could be and do just this – all for $29.95 (a bargain I say!).

Let me give you a picture of what my life was like before reading this book. In the picture below (click on it to enlarge), I am sitting at my desk feeling overwhelmed by the mess and all the projects in my life.

I have had enough.

‘I have too much to do! I don’t have enough time to do it all’ is something I used to frequently tell myself. I always had this sense that I had forgotten to do something, that I was running out of time.

I knew that there had to be a better way to do things and several people had told me that David Allen’s book had changed their lives dramatically.

So I set myself a challenge. I’d give myself 3 days to read his book and implement his system. I wouldn’t allow myself to be distracted by phone calls, email, university work, appointments, etc. It was just 3 days of me with my clutter and new filing system (as well as the occasional conversation with my partner to stop me from losing my mind).

The beauty about this book is David Allen takes you through implementing the process step by step. It’s like he is there by your side, holding your hand and cheering you on as you sort through your piles of papers and random clutter.

Papers, Papers Everywhere!

My biggest problem was I had folders and notebooks full of interesting articles, ideas and projects scattered all over my house. If you told me ‘Jane, go get me the notes you took while watching Al Gore’s movie’, I wouldn’t know where to look.

David Allen says you need one centralised system, that shouldn’t take you more than 1 minute to find the document you need. If it does, your system needs some work.

Mine clearly needed some work. So I got a box (David refers to it as your ‘inbox’) and started dumping everything into it. Papers, paintings and photos that no longer inspired me, books that were collecting dust, etc. What an emotional roller coaster ride this was! I felt excited and liberated as I threw away papers I no longer needed. At other times, I just felt completely overwhelmed by all my ’stuff’. ‘Why did I even get this in the first place?’, ‘What was I thinking buying all these cheap toxic textas/stationary when I already had enough?’ and ‘Is David Allen’s system actually going to help me? What if it doesn’t?’ I thought.

YouTube Inspiration

One night (when I was feeling flat after sorting through piles and piles of papers) at 12:30am, I logged onto youtube to see if there was anyone out there who had benefited from GTD. I was excited to find an American woman with purple hair who had been using the system say ‘GTD is about kicking ass!’. That was enough to keep me going.

I then got myself some files and created the following:

General reference folder: for all the articles, notes, etc that I didn’t want to throw out

Someday/Maybe folder: For all the activities and projects that I didn’t want to do now but at maybe later on in the future I’d want to do

Project folders: A bunch of manila folders for the projects I was currently working on (these were labeled with my cool, new automatic labeler)

Already, I was starting to feel clearer and more energised (even if I was starting to have obsessive dreams about filing and my partner setting the table with stationary instead of cutlery).

GTD Notebook

A big part of David Allen’s system is the GTD notebook. It’s a notebook or folder that you create that contains lists of all your ideas, projects, ‘next actions’, things your waiting for from others, etc. It’s a place where you dump everything from your mind onto, because the last thing you want is to waste your mental energy by having the same reoccurring thoughts (e.g. ‘I must remember to return my library books’, ‘Can’t forget to call Lisa’, etc.).

I made sure I bought a book I liked because I had been warned ‘If your materials look shabby, you won’t be inspired to use them’.

Much more to GTD

There’s much more to GTD than I can possibly share with you in one blog post. I mean David Allen spends close to 300 pages explaining it in his book! But don’t think it’s complex, because it’s not. David is just extremely thorough and doesn’t allow for anything to be missed.

So does GTD help? Did it help me? You bet! Thankfully my dreams are back to normal and for the first time in my life, I am in control of my papers/clutter and not my papers/clutter in control of me!

Below is a photo of my desk now.

Sure it looks clean, but it’s not about being clean. If only my camera could capture the sense of freedom and how effective and clear minded I now feel from having a system that works and makes sense.