Hi Friend,

When I meet people and they learn I’m a Certified Professional Organizer® and Productivity Coach, I get asked questions like, “What’s your top tip for organizing or productivity?”

My go-to productivity tip is usually sleep. Getting quality sleep makes such a huge difference, but I also know there are so many factors that go into whether someone can actually get more sleep or get better sleep. So my next top tip — one that can be a little easier to control and practice — is a simple one that seems to stump so many people…

Write it down.

I know. It seems simple. And I get a lot of nodding when I say it. “Oh yeah, I write everything down.” But I’ve worked with enough people to know that we say we do, but we don’t always do it. We overestimate our memory. We convince ourselves we’ll remember because it’s important, because it seems obvious, or because there isn’t that much time between now and when we need to remember it.

But then the reality hits. Because it seemed small or simple, we don’t remember. Something falls through the cracks. We get frustrated. We blame the system — or worse, we give ourselves no grace for forgetting.

As I’ve been saying for years, yes, our brains are powerful. We can recall amazing memories from decades ago, but somehow not what we planned to do yesterday. Our brains are processing so much information minute by minute. It’s honestly kind of insane how much we expect ourselves to remember.

So write it down. Write it down in a central place. Designate where you’re going to keep your reminders, tasks, to-dos — whatever you want to call them. Go digital. Go paper. Use whatever works for you. But write it down.

You’re helping your future self. Seriously, think about your future self for a minute. Imagine they’ve had a crazy day or week. Maybe they’re sick, exhausted, or just completely out of it. Then they see the reminder you left for them: Pick up the forms. Buy a card. Pay the bill.

And they think, “OMG, I almost forgot! Thank goodness I wrote that down.”

Win.

Thank you, past self, for the reminder.

Then you feel like a rockstar because you remembered and because you took care of yourself by writing it down. It’s kind of like an act of self-care. If thinking about it that way helps you do it, then do it. You’re avoiding the stress of forgetting, the “OMG, how did I forget that?” moment, and the shame spiral that can come with it.

That’s self-care.

So write it down. You can even make it a little game. I heard an idea in a workshop once that I loved: If you had $1,000 on the line for remembering something without writing it down, would you risk it?

Probably not. You’d write it down because that’s a lot of money.

So… write it down.

Now tell me: Where do you write it down? What works for you?

And if you’re reading this and laughing because you’re thinking, “I don’t have a system!” — reach out. Let’s create one. You deserve to have a place to put all those reminders so you don’t have to rely on your memory to keep track of everything.