Craft By Zen

šŸ“– 4 min read

šŸ”– newsletter   season_2   letters

The Reliance Problem

Part of the series, ā€œAdmission Failureā€

I fail to look past how spotty my memory is. Itā€™s embarrassing how often I give in to the temptation that I will always remember everything pertinent in the future.

While perusing the video store, a stranger walked up to me and asked for some movie recommendations. We got to chatting and it turns out we had similar tastes in movies and video games. I found out we were both around the same age. We were both teenagers; he was a year older. He told me he had moved to this area a month prior and was looking for new friends. I told him Iā€™d be happy to be his friend, and he invited me to come to his place to play video games. Yet I had this tinge I was forgetting something. When I got home later that evening, my dad was furious I had missed my piano lesson.

Surely my memory should be better today. Nope. Iā€™m still failing to remember meetings, engagements, and birthdays. There are some differences between my teenager self and how I operate today. I have a set of strategies to minimize these spots in my memory.

Using a Calendar

Iā€™ve hated time-boxing when I was younger. Chunking time made me feel like I couldnā€™t have any unstructured time. But Iā€™ve looked past it after I saw how much benefit I got out of it. The important thing is to have the calendar ubiquitous. For example, if I am planning to attend an event next month, I will put it on the calendar immediately.

Thereā€™s a major flaw. I forget to do mark my calendar every now and again, especially if Iā€™m busy that moment. Take last weekend as an example. I scheduled to have brunch with some friends, but I forgot to mark it on the calendar. Another friend asked me to help him out around the same time. I agreed and put that in the calendar instead. It was the night before when I had my ā€œa haā€ moment.

Calendars donā€™t work for everyone. You will have to use the tool you feel most comfortable with. It could be a bullet journal, or a paper calendar, or a wad of post-it notes shoved in your pocket.

Delegate When You Can

I suck at the follow-up. Iā€™ll be at a meet-up and forget reach back to people who gave me their card. Let me let you in on a secret about productive people. They are great at delegation. Thereā€™s not enough time throughout the day to do everything you can imagine. At most, I can reliably do one thing a day. Anything more is a godsend. So ask the other person to reach back instead. Or ask them to do something they canā€™t refuse for you. An example can be to make the other person text you when they get home so you donā€™t get worried about them.

Write Personal Messages

I love personal messages to myself. I have trouble listening to other people, so I listen to myself a lot better if I wrote them in a tone Iā€™d listen to. Hereā€™s a calendar event I set for Saturday, March 3rd, 2018.

Dear Jeremy,
I know you have a tendency to neglect your taxes until April. Donā€™t do that. Instead, this is a reminder for you to get started on them today.

By now, you should have all of your tax documented gathered. Most likely, youā€™ve piled them in the corner of your desk. Hereā€™s a checklist of all of the documents you should have.

ā€” List of Documents ā€”

Next steps is to login to Turbo Tax and log in the data. You have kept your donation receipts in this folder.

In case you need it, hereā€™s last yearā€™s tax return.

Cheers, and happy tax filing,
Ghost of Past Jeremy

Automate When Possible

An extension of all three of these ideas culminate to a set it and forget it mindset. If I set the email for next year, why canā€™t I have it recurring every year?

Or automation could be behavioral. For example, if someone gives me a book recommendations, I have an automatic response to write it down. Developing routines saves us mental energy. Automated strategies are not always technological.

Final Thoughts

These strategies are guidelines, not a matter of fact. Adopt one or all if you so choose. Or modify them to fit your needs. The worldā€™s too much for a one-size-fits-all approach.


Written by Jeremy Wong and published on .


For the newsletter archive, check out Newsletter Series. For this specific series, check out the Newsletter: Season Two .

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