Your Brain is Not For Remembering!

Laurie, a local solopreneur, is finding herself increasingly agitated, frustrated and overwhelmed trying to stay on top of the details of her rapidly growing business. Currently she’s juggling 23 clients, each with their own separate set of paper and electronic files.

During the week, she has items to pick up and drop off, notes from those visits to act on, and phone calls to juggle in between. Laurie is also receiving about 60 emails a day with requests, instructions, and other action items.

And she admits that she hasn’t had time to pay her own bills, file, or even go to the gym in the last few months.

So, while the good news is Laurie’s business is growing, she vividly realizes her juggling act isn’t working anymore!

Information Jugglers

Here are some sobering facts about the amount of information we try to manage each day:

1. The average person has to deal with 3 phone numbers (work, cell, home), a fax number, two addresses (work and home), 1-4 email addresses (business and personal), and a variety of social media monikers.
2. The average person has at least a dozen sites they use regularly that require a unique login and password. Unfortunately, most people choose the same password over and over again. However, with the advent of companies focusing more on security, password changes are becoming more unique in their requirement, making it harder to use the same one over and over
3. A recent study by Harris Interactive showed that an average worker feels comfortable handling up 50 emails a day. Once they head north of that number, most say they can’t keep up.
4. In 2011, the average person is projected to receive more than 200 emails per day
5. People waste hours each day trying to find forms, contracts, numbers, and notes.
6. All of us receive information from a wide variety of sources: TV, radio, internet browsing, email, publications, periodicals, and more.

How do we keep up with all?!?!

In short, we must become more systematic about managing the information we receive by asking:

• What is this information for?
• What do I need to do with it?
• Can I do it right now?
• If I can’t do it right now, how will I remember that it needs to be done later?

Most of us continue to use our brains to remember the things we need to do. With the onslaught of information and details, we are failing with this technique. Sure, we can trim down the information by unsubscribing from various e-zines, mailing lists, and feeds that clog up our email. We can reduce down to two phone numbers and two email boxes. We can even use a timer to keep ourselves on task. But what about the rest of it? How the heck do we manage the details and “remember” everything we need to do?

The first step is getting your arms around the information that is critical for your business (which is worthy of a whole other blog post). You need a process to manage the flow of information using categories like “action” or “reference.” Then you need to let the process work by taking your brain out of the equation.

If you’re still trying to use your brain to remember everything these days, my bet is you’re failing – and miserably. And in the process (or lack of one) you’re losing time, money, and clients.

Need helping figuring out a way to manage it all? Call Mattson Business Services, Inc. We can help! (704) 553-8082 or [email protected].