Are chaos and confusion your closest friends? Come along as Sally and her Mom show us the power of a capture tool.
What is a capture tool? It is a simple step you can take to determine where information you consume will go and wait for you. Our current world offers us both digital or analog options. A digital capture tool may be your Google Drive, OneNote or Dropbox with a folder or document where everything gets dumped until you have time to process through it. An analog capture tool can be as basic as a manilla file folder or notebook, or a Pee-Chee!
Let’s step back and see this in action.
Sally is walking down the hallway and the ASB president reminds her that she has to present that thing at the next meeting. Sally can’t forget…again! Thank goodness, Sally had taken a few minutes before school started to determine a simple flow of information and the first step was her yellow notebook with a picture of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle on the front. Everything will go in that notebook until she can get home and put reminders on her calendar or get that paper to Mom to sign.
On the other side of our story, Mom is at work and the phone rings again and this time it is a reminder that if she doesn’t get that document signed and notarized by end of day tomorrow there will be a re-drafting fee. Mom grabs a post it note, jots down a reminder and shoves it in her pocket.
Later that day, Sally sits down for a few minutes at home to go over her notes and reminders for the day. ASB presentation gets moved to her online calendar where she sets a 2 day reminder so she doesn’t let the group down...again. Mom, on the other hand, throws her clothes in the washer on her way to make dinner and completely forgets about the post-it note in her pocket.
Way to go Sally! You identified your capture tool, used it to gather bits and pieces of information, took a minute to review it and put things where they belong and you rocked that ASB presentation! Mom…well, we need to talk!
A capture tool can be a simple, first step to getting the chaos and confusion of every day to take a seat. My challenge to you is to take a few minutes to determine the following; are you a digital or paper kind of person, do you have a capture tool for digital stuff and one for paper and notes? Find your capture tools, and set a reminder tonight to review what is in your capture tools.
The moral of this story is to be like Sally.