I’ve been reading Getting Things Donefor the last few days and it made me realize that a lot of the situations where I feel “not as sharp” or “forgetful” might be a symptom of me not adapting well to different times.
In college and schooling days in general, we have very clear goals. We aim to do well in school, and once break time comes we get to relax and recharge. Then school starts again and we go back to the grind.
This all changes when you’re out. You don’t have goals that are set in place for you. It’s completely up to you to determine what those are. There are so many options that it’s overwhelming. Recently, I was feeling like this was the exact reason why my choice of action was to basically do nothing.
GTD pointed out something pretty crucial to me — there’s often too many things going on around you and in your mind. Taking those things out of your mind and putting them into a “source of truth” location like a todo list helps clear things up. Right now I’ve gone back to using google tasks, but I’ve also tried TickTick, I’m just not a fan of having to pay for things (especially subscriptions!) that I think can be more or less done by free alternatives.
It’s been a couple of weeks now where I’ve been following this scheme, and even though I haven’t been perfect about it, I’ve been doing a decent job of keeping up with it. The effects are noticeable — I’m able to be a bit more “in-the-moment,” and my general sentiment has been looking more positive over time.