🧠🕐 Tips and tricks for remembering things

You likely have a todo list for each day, and a calendar with any meetings or events you need to attend. But what about the things that quite don’t fit into either bucket?

It’s easy to forget things like changing your AC filter or paying your child’s quarterly sports fee, simply because they are irregular. They don’t belong as a calendar event, they belong on some future todo list that doesn’t exist yet.

This email will give you some tips for remembering these irregular things in life.

1. Capture items as soon as you think of them

Thoughts are fleeting, and you need to capture them quickly before they dissipate.

The fastest way by far to record a thought at any moment in time is by a voice note. Make sure you use a tool that lets you take accurate notes on the go, even if it’s not your primary tool.

💡 Pro Tip: You can add widgets to your iPhone and Apple Watch lock screen to immediately record a voice note with a single tap.

The important thing here is that you capture things you need to remember immediately. Having a mobile notes app you can type in, or even a small notebook also works well.

As long as you capture it, you’ll be able to organize it later.

2. Save things to future daily notes

If you work out of a daily note each day, you have a home base to start from each morning. That means you can simply write reminders and todo items in future daily notes.

Let’s say you want to try a streaming service on a free trial, but don’t want to be charged automatically. If it’s a 1-week free trial, just add a reminder to your daily note 6 days later.

In Reflect, you can also refer to relative dates in the future. That means you can write a future reminder in today's Daily Note, and it will show up in the incoming backlinks section of the future Daily Note.

3. Add “tasks” for ongoing projects

Let’s say you are starting a newsletter on the side. The next big thing you need to do when you have time is design a landing page.

Create a note for the project (“Side Projects” in this case), and add a task to that note. The task will then appear from your main task management page so you don’t forget.

Once you know the exact day you want to do something, add a date to schedule it. The task will also appear on that daily note.

4. Pin notes and tasks you want to regularly look at

You likely have some key notes that you want to keep top of mind.

Maybe it's your annual or quarterly goals and priorities. Maybe it's a note filled with your values or self-improvement elements you're working on. For notes like this, it's good to pin them. This ensures that you will see it briefly each day.

You can also add tasks within Pinned Notes, which will easily show within the “Tasks” tab under that Pinned Note label.

If you’d like to explore more ways to remember things in the future, checkout our YouTube video on the topic.