Your brain has a capacity limit. Don't overload it. Don't fill it with details. Don't burden it with worry.
Get a system.
Make your system your storehouse. File therein the little cares that wear and tear - the important details that annoy.
Make your system the guardian of the necessary, the grave of the needless. Leave your work at night, free and unshackled. Your system will bring your duties before you the next morning - the next week - the next month.
Train your system to remember all that it should not forget - to forget all that it should not remember.
Carry with you the success of today. File with your system the duty of tomorrow, profit from your failure of yesterday and then - Forget It.
First Aids to Your Memory
Carry the big things in your head - the details in your pocket is an axiom from the science of business. And the student of big business knows that a mind burdened with details is not efficient. The business man whose attention is concentrated on the big things acquires a perspective which overlooks routine and personal detail. While determining the big change in selling policy, he forgets a lunch engagement with a friendly prospect; intent on a hundred thousand dollar building expansion, he neglects to pay his life insurance. This, however, is not a weakness on the part of the executive. Details are lost in focusing his mind on the large affaire. He needs a mechanical help. This mechanical help may consist of a pocket memorandum, a desk file, a calendar pad, the collapsible pocketbook, or a variety of contrivances, but the user of each should adopt a comprehensive plan and follow it.
The Advantages of Keeping Daily Memoranda Loosely - Cutting Away the Details
Loose leaf books of all kinds have so largely displaced the permanently bound style in office use that loose leaf memorandum books have come in the natural order of things. The difficulty with the ordinary bound note book is that it is always overloaded with a mass of material no longer needed. In the loose leaf binder each leaf as it serves its purpose, from day to day, may be removed and destroyed. A variety of specific uses may be made of the loose leaf memorandum to suit personal needs. One method is to date a dozen or more leaves ahead, and make notes of things to be done on those dates. Each morning the old sheets are taken out and the current date is always kept as the first page in the book. If some little thing remains undone it may be noted down on the next page or for some future day. This keeps the matter in the book always fresh.
General notes not properly coming on the dated sheets may be made on the leaves in the back and torn out when they have served their purpose. Loose leaves can now be obtained in a wide variety of ruled and printed forms. Miniature day books, cask books, journals, ledgers - all these may be made from the single pocket binder. Thus temporary entries of personal or business transactions may be made wherever the user chances to be and a concise and accurate record is kept until time of final entry in the permanent account books. For the keeping of personal expense accounts the pocket memorandum may in some cases be found entirely adequate in itself, the different forms affording opportunity for proper posting and the striking of a periodical balance. Leaves containing closed accounts may be removed and filed for reference. One pocket memorandum scheme which goes even farther than the ordinary loose leaf book is a binder having on the inside of the cover a metal rim for holding half a dozen or more cards tabbed and indexed at the upper edge. These cards inside one cover are indexed with the days of the week and month, and inside the other with letters of the alphabet. A supply of cards, tabbed for all the days of the year, can be obtained and placed in a drawer in the office file. Memorandum notes for future dates may then be made on any of the cards as far as a year ahead.
Each Monday morning the cards for the week just starting are taken from the file and placed in the pocket binders. Each morning the card of the previous day is removed from its top position in the binder and slipped behind the others. This memorandum scheme is in reality a combination office and pocket card system, and has a distinct advantage in that reminder notes may be made for almost any time in the future. Every office and road man has constant need of a readily accessible list of addresses and phone numbers of business men and personal friends. For this purpose a note book with alphabetically tabbed sections is always the most satisfactory. Ordinarily it is found desirable to keep a small pocket memorandum exclusively for addresses and in such cases a permanently bound book is quite as suitable as a loose leaf. It is possible, however, to procure a few loose leaves tabbed with letters and insert them in a back or middle section in a loose leaf binder.
More tips on how to plan and organize your daily work at http://SystemizeWork.FunHowToBooks.com/
