Do you own a whiteboard?
I find the best way to work through issues, problems or barriers in your business, project or life in general is to use a whiteboard. Write it all down, rub it off, write it down again, sort the mess in your head on the whiteboard and then you write, file or solve what was the mess in your head.
Although there are a million apps that you can use to do similar things, or just plain pen and paper, I find the whiteboard better to dump the mess and sort visually.
- Writing things down helps clear the mind! When you have lots of stuff going on in your head, your thoughts become fuzzy. Writing things down helps order those thoughts and by using the white board you can help your brain to see things in order rather than a fuzzy mess.
- Your head can only hold so much, get some of it out and reset the RAM! Your brain is just a big old computer and eventually your Random Access Memory (RAM) gets over loaded and you need to dump some stuff to be able to get back onto the day to day stuff.
- Ideas don't stay for long, get them out and flesh them out! Ever had a great idea and thought I'll write that down later, then when you come to re think the idea it's gone? Yeah exactly.... where was I?
- Defrag the memory! Too much info and mess to think through makes your brain work overtime and you will find it hard to focus.
- There are cognitive benefits to writing things down. Writing by hand is also shown to increase memory and retention. The act of putting pen to paper/whiteboard activates areas of the brain that helps people increase their comprehension. It also involves more senses and motor neurons than when typing on a keyboard.
If you don't have access to a whiteboard, get a large A2 pad and use that, better that trying to write a whole lot of stuff into a teeny tiny notebook :)
