A Simple Way To Stop Forgetting Important To-Dos

You are sitting at a coffee shop sipping on a cup when suddenly you realize that you forgot to put some work into a particular project.  You tell yourself “I gotta remember to work on that when I get back to the office.”  You go back to the office and have a great rest of the day.

As you drive home you feel I little sick to your stomach because you just realized something.  You forgot to work on that project that you thought about at the coffee shop.

The problem with this scenario is sometimes we forget things and we don’t remember them for a few days or maybe even a couple of weeks.  The one thing you don’t want is for your client to remind you to get something done.  That’s  never a good thing.

Business owners are busy.

We manage multiple projects with multiple clients.

We balance working on our clients work with the work that needs to be done on our own business.

It’s easy to forget tasks no matter how important they are. Everyone is susceptible to it.

This is why I started carrying around a capture tool to ensure that I immediately capture to-dos that came to my mind.  It used to be a little notebook.  Now I use the online tool Evernote.

With Evernote I can capture photos, notes, etc.  I can tag notes, organize them, share them etc.  Most importantly I have an app on my Droid that allows me to do this with a tool that I always have on me, my phone.

At the end of each day I organize my notes and handle simple to-dos immediately and handle bigger to-dos by creating time and space in my calendar to work on at a later date.

Since I implemented this system three years ago, I have found that the productivity and service that I offer my clients has improved dramatically.  The best part about it is that it’s simple and keeps me from being branded as the unreliable entrepreneur who’s terrible at following through.

Implementing a capture tool into your daily productivity is a simple way to ensure that you capture great ideas and important to-dos right on the spot.  What other tools do you use to help you remember important items?