Second Cup: Your head is a lousy office
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Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this special offer at oracle.com slash strategic. That's oracle.com slash strategic. Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is that your head is a lousy office. Don't try to remember to-dos and where-tos and how-tos. Instead, get tasks done.

scheduled commitments, and other information out of your head and into something much more reliable. That will help keep you on track and keep your mind free for other things. Today's tip comes from a recent article in the New York Times about the use of professional productivity tools in our personal lives. If you have ever sent out a doodle poll to find a date for your book club, used a spreadsheet to coordinate who's bringing what to Thanksgiving dinner,

Or if you email your best friend as often as your boss, you understand the concept. I actually think it's wise to bring the same intentionality to our personal time that we bring to our work. And if the tools of your professional life can help you do that, why not use them? In the article, productivity guru David Allen is credited with pointing out that your head is a lousy office, though apparently he used a more colorful word than lousy.

In our professional and personal lives, it is smart to remember that humans have a lot of trouble remembering things. We mean well, but we're busy. We get distracted. Rather than tax our working memory, it's better to keep track of appointments, to-dos, priorities, and so forth somewhere else that we can consult when we need to. If you are listening to Before Breakfast, you are probably more inclined than the average person

to put your scheduled commitments in a paper or digital calendar. That's good for work and it's good for personal commitments, like a date with your partner or your spin class. However, most of us have responsibilities that are not particularly time-bound. We have tasks we need to remember. True productivity means getting these vague thoughts out of your head, which, remember, is a lousy office and somewhere actionable. For most of us, that means creating a variety of lists.

I make a weekly priority list every Friday about the main things that need to get done that week. I make daily to-do lists where I pull items off the weekly list based on what else I have going on. I also keep a Friday punch list of little tasks that I need to tackle at some point, things like making a hair appointment or ordering a gift. I add to this list as I think of these things and then I aim to do them all in one fell swoop at a low-energy time.

Hence, why I call it a Friday punch list. That's a pretty good number of lists, but honestly, most of us should use still more. There's the grocery list, which hopefully means you don't spend $250 at the store and still come home with nothing for dinner. There may be lists of desires. I like the idea of a list of 100 dreams of things you might want to do someday. You could put restaurants you'd like to try or places to visit.

or concerts to experience on there. You probably also want some good system for nudging yourself to think about things at the right time. It turns out that June is often too late to be thinking about summer plans, at least if your kids want to go to popular camps or if you enjoy popular vacation destinations. So maybe you can set a calendar alarm for a date in January to start thinking of summer. You could set a date in mid-November to think through holiday gifts.

If your school district releases the calendar at a certain time of year, you could set an alarm for that time to start putting in PTO requests. The point here is that you aren't going to remember to do this on your own. You might think, how could I not remember to start planning the summer? But life gets busy. You'll have a huge work project in January, or everyone will get sick, and it will just slip your mind. Yet again, you might not hit some deadlines.

You might mean to remember your sister's birthday, but, you know, you forgot it last year. Do you really trust your brain to remember this year, even though it's failed before? Your brain is a lousy office. The support staff is massively subpar. You need systems that actually work for you. So get it all out of your head, and you'll be much better off.

If you're interested in the New York Times article I mentioned, you can find it at nytimes.com by searching on its title, When Did Our Personal Lives Get So Professional? In addition to David Allen, I am cited in the article too. I'd love to hear what you think about using professional productivity tools in your personal life. You can reach me at laura at lauravandercam.com. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening.

And here's to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody. I'd love to hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at BeforeBreakfastPod. That's B-E, the number four, then breakfast, P-O-D.

You can also shoot me an email at beforebreakfastpodcasts at iheartmedia.com. That before breakfast is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much. I look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. iHeartRadio.

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