Annie Binns | Life in the Fun Lane

This post is the first in a series I’m working on to give you some simple tips for making your life easier. What could be better, right? Before I jump in, let me share a bit of my personal philosophy: I believe life should be easy most of the time. I also believe that human beings have a knack for making easy things difficult. I used to be an excellent example of how to make things harder than they should be, until I finally got so busy that I started to forget really simple things like my name.

Plato coined the phrase, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” No wonder people think he was smart. I knew I needed to figure out how to simplify the way I managed things in order to maintain my loosening grip on sanity. That was about ten years ago, and I’ve come up with a lot of great tricks since then. These won’t work for everyone – just take the ones you want and toss the rest out for the squirrels to eat.

Living the Easy Life – # 1

Write it down.

That’s not a command. That’s the tip. Really. But here’s some more on how to make it work…

• Choose something that you look at every day. It can be a notebook, refrigerator door, your computer, the bathroom mirror or even the back of the door you use to leave the house.
• Find a way to put a list on the item you chose. I recommend a small dry-erase board or a bulletin board for places where you can hang something. For the computer, I use a program that has a task list feature. The only requirement is that it is something you can write (or type) on.
• Write down everything you have been trying not to forget. Use as few words as possible, but enough for you to understand the meaning. Don’t try to trick yourself with clever shorthand or you’ll lose sleep over why you needed “drcldrs” (which turned out to be a poorly-chosen reminder to get my dress from the dry cleaners).
• Look at the list every day. Cross off things and add more.

Yes, it really is that simple. And I promise you will sleep better once you have rid your brain of things you thought you might forget. If you make this a regular habit, you will not only save time, but you will astound your friends with your uncanny ability to know you need cat litter AND it’s also Robert Redford’s birthday.

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