(4 November 2024)
Like most people, I’m good at some things, and bad at others. I’m good at writing quickly - I can churn out a draft article, speech, blog post or case study very quickly. I’ve made a career out of that.
What I’m bad at is processing information quickly. I can process things, but it takes me a while. I’ve had to adapt some working habits accordingly: particularly, the act of having a think and working out what questions I need to ask next time we talk.
The main result of this is a note called “Ask”. Years ago it used to live as a text file in a folder; then it became a note inside Notational Velocity. These days it lives inside Apple Notes.
I use the “Ask” note to write down the things I need to ask people, next time I speak to them.
It’s useful and necessary for me, because my brain processes slowly, over many days. I’ll keep thinking of more things to ask, in dribs and drabs, for quite a while. Every time a new question pops into my head - which will usually happen while I’m thinking about something completely different - it’s easy to quickly open the “Ask” note and jot it down.
I speed the process up with an Alfred workflow called Search Notes, by Sean Ballinger. In practice it looks like this: open Alfred (⌘+Space), then type “nn ask” to find the note, and hit return to open it.
So there you go. Keep an “Ask” note, just like you keep a “Todo” note. That’s it, that’s the productivity tip.
giles (at) gilest.org
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