The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

A for­got­ten loose end

When we com­mu­ni­cate in so many dif­fer­ent chan­nels this becomes much more dif­fi­cult. Or rather, the risk of miss­ing some­thing increas­es. Imag­ine that you are hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one some­where — in a thread of text mes­sages, for instance. You write back and forth, one mes­sage right after the oth­er. But, then the oth­er per­son writes some­thing that means you have to do some­thing else which you can­not do instant­ly. You might have to look into some­thing and then get back to them.

At this moment, you have two options (or per­haps even more):

1. Either you just tell your­self to remem­ber that you have to look the thing up and then get back to the per­son you have been chat­ting with via text, or
2. you make a note some­where that you will look it up and get back to them.

If I were you, I would go with the sec­ond option. Write what­ev­er it is that you will not do imme­di­ate­ly as a to-do-task on your list amongst all the oth­er things you have to do. Then, and only then, will you be able to ful­ly depend on your to-do-list (or cal­en­dar, depend­ing on what the task entails) and trust that it tru­ly con­tains all the things you have to do.

Do this

If you have ever promised some­one to do some­thing that was acci­den­tal­ly left in a chat or mes­sage-thread some­where and wish to pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing again, do the fol­low­ing right now:

1. Skim through the con­ver­sa­tions you have had for the past week in the chan­nels you fre­quent­ly use and see if you find some­thing you have for­got­ten about which need­ed doing or respond­ing to. If you find some­thing, write it down as a to-do-task on your list.
2. From today on, make it a habit to write down what you will not do imme­di­ate­ly as a task on your list — regard­less of what chan­nel the con­ver­sa­tion is con­duct­ed in. If you are lucky, your to-do-list tool has a func­tion that allows you to add tasks from the chan­nel direct­ly and almost automatically.

Few­er fails

If you write down all the things you do not do imme­di­ate­ly, you will end up with few­er loose ends to keep track of. It will become eas­i­er to do the right thing at the right time, and you can rest assured that you real­ly and tru­ly have every­thing you have to do some­time soon gath­ered on your to-do-list and in your calendar.

Sure, it takes a lit­tle longer to write the task down than not to, but per­haps you should ask your­self what it is worth to you that oth­ers feel they can depend on and trust you to do what you have said you would? And while you are at it, take a moment to con­sid­er the poten­tial con­se­quences of for­get­ting some­thing impor­tant. What would those be?

What’s your way?

How do you ensure you nev­er for­get to do some­thing that risks being left unat­tend­ed to at the bot­tom of some thread or con­ver­sa­tion? Tell me in an email!

(By the way, do you know there’s a trap that will make you remem­ber?)