Day 27: Simple Note

Over the years, I’ve tried many methods — checklists, to-do lists, brain dumps, diaries, daily mindsets, goals and an assortment of others.

I’ve failed to make any one of them work in the long run. While there is a psychological benefit in offloading your brain to an external medium, the most common suggested method — write everything out on paper — has become ineffective for me.

The paper method of brain dumping worked initially, but over time, I found that the more I write, the more my brain seemed to come up with more ideas. What was meant to be a quick offload often quickly turns in an hour brainstorming of what I will do and should do session.

So I tried digital solutions.

From typing everything on my phone to Trello to Evernote, I find myself getting side tracked by the functionality and features.

It turns out that, for me, brain dumping is an art that requires a certain amount of discipline to carry out each time.

What I need is something that is dirt simple with no extra features to get me side tracked but beautiful and usable enough to keep me hooked.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to go and see Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, speak when he was visiting New Zealand. It was there that I was introduced to Simple Note.

I’ve used Simple Note on and off over the years, always giving up for my much more complicated systems. Today, I stopped brain dumping into my note book and filling out more pages than necessary and used the online app instead.

I kept my ‘notes’ simple — each page with just enough to outline what I needed to remember and things to do for each area of my life. I found that forcing myself to keep only to the essentials and keep to the basics, I turned off the hyper vigilant part of my brain.

On paper, I would get carried away with ideas and things I should do — writing them all out again and again, day after day. With Simple Note, I can see at a glance what was remaining to be done.

And perhaps that’s all I needed after all this time — something that is so bare-bones that I can’t even underline or make bold fonts that it forces me to only dump out the most important.

But today is just day 1 of using Simple Note and the change may just be the refresh I needed for this new journey I’m on. The old system is linked to my old way of life. Simple Note may or may not help me achieve what I want to achieve.

Only time and persistence will tell.

So for anyone that’s interested, you can find Simple Note here.