I wrote it down so that I wouldn’t have to remember.

The human brain is amazing until it doesn’t want to do what it’s told. That is when I turn to post it notes. My motto is I wrote it down so that I wouldn’t have to remember. I have a cork board in my room that is quite literally plastered with notes to myself. My friends think it is chaotic and confusing, but I think that it gets everything up off the surface of my desk, and is thus way more organized than any other method I have ever tried before.

This does get a little inconvenient after a while because you end up covering your desk in little notes to yourself, and then you either have to have only one line item per note (and after you complete it you throw it out), or you get to cross things off a list.

I find that one of the most amazingly satisfying things when you are overwhelmed is crossing items off on a list. Just being able to check off, Yes, I finished that reading, Yes, I took out the garbage, No, I still need to finish that ten page term paper for tomorrow morning has a real mind clearing property that is one of the major underlying factors of the Think Zone. Get stuff OUT of your head and on paper so that you can work on what you need to without worrying about whether or not you forgot about an important something you were supposed to do.