Ep. 70 - Write It Down

Is anybody else sporting a terrible memory?  Oh man, I'm probably the worst I've ever met, but I can't remember.  Seriously, forgetting names, ideas, points, tasks, the names of my children... it's a big deal.  But, the work still needs to be done, you know?  Names still need to be recalled.  Duties still need to be carried out.  The Lord's work still needs to be done.  Enter a life hack:  Write it down!  No matter a digital or paper tool, create an environment for success by documenting things you will need later.  This is a crucial step in the Excel Still More life and this episode will dig in on how that all works out. 

- Do you have a poor memory? Do you forget people, places and things with ease?

- Are we still held responsible for things we forgot

- So how can we keep track of new information and current, daily goals

- What are the direct benefits of documenting ideas and how do we do it.

- What are the top 5 (or so) things we ought to consider writing down daily

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello, welcome to the Excel Still More podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson, and we are here to talk about tips and strategies that you can employ to deepen your faith, improve your relationships, and just get the most out of your life. Thank you for joining. Let's get started. As we get started today, you can probably tell that the content of today's episode is very practical. By the time we're done, I want to talk to you about methods by which you would write things down, what those things ought to be, and some of the direct benefit I have seen this year from adding this habit to my life. So, in that sense, there are no surprises here. We're going to talk about write it down, and we're not covering for some hidden meaning. However, I do think it's worth explaining that writing things down is the solution to a problem. There's something more going on that needed to be addressed, and this became the way to address it. The problem, in short, is that I have maybe the world's worst memory. Like you're probably listening thinking, no, no, I'm pretty sure my memory is worse than yours. Or maybe you're saying, you've got to meet my spouse. That is definitely the worst you'll ever find. I can compete with anyone. I hear something, I recognize that thing is important, and if I don't do something about it within five minutes, it is completely erased. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone brand new, just met them? Maybe at church or something, and you extend your hand and tell them your name, and they tell you their name in return, and before even the audible vibrations of sound have diminished, their name has been deleted from your database. This happens to me a lot. And I'm gonna tell you, it's not about not caring. It's not saying, Well, I really don't care about that person, that's why I forgot their name two milliseconds after they said it. Or this person who asked me if I would do something for them, well, they just weren't important enough for me to actually do it. That is not what's going on. I do care about the person. I just can't remember. I forget, it slips right out. Now the temptation here is to just make excuses. I meet a lot of new people, I have a lot of things going on. We live in a culture of short attention spans. There's always some reason why I forgot to do the right thing. So here's what we can do. We can just laugh that off and be unproductive. And I think that was my take earlier in my life. I would just say, look, I know you're telling me something right now, but just know that I forget a lot of stuff and I may not do it. Or if I did forget something important, or I studied something and the day later couldn't remember anything I'd studied, I would just sort of say, you know what? That's just the way I am, you know. But the problem is when you meet people and forget their names, or you agree to do something for someone and then forget to do it, or you study the word of God and don't remember what you studied, after a while, the excuses lead to something more ominous, and that is lack of effort. Why would I even go try to meet this person? I won't be able to remember the conversation. Why would I even agree to go visit this person next week? I'm probably going to forget and disappoint them. Why am I even reading my Bible? When day after day I can't even remember what I read yesterday. I have fought with all of those things. And while it may not seem like that big of a deal, it's just the way it is, it happens to us all. I contend that it it kind of is a big deal. And I think personally I see that more clearly now that I've implemented some strategies to do better, mainly write it down, which we'll talk a lot about in a minute. I do follow through more regularly on commitments that I make to other people, and I do remember people's names, or at least can find those names quickly, and am able to address them by name the second time I see them, which is pretty rare, of course. And I have seen the direct benefits of remembering, or maybe a better terminology would be recalling or finding the information. Because when you write something down, it doesn't mean you're going to remember it. It just means I have a place to go to find information that I have forgotten. And that feels really good. When you forget something important and you're reminded after you failed to complete the task or carry out the work, it really stinks. But when you look at your notes and reminders and you catch that before it happens and you're able to actually do it, it's pretty awesome. Let me say something else. I mentioned to you that this is a big deal. It is a big deal because of the way it affects other people. As I said, this year, as things have gotten better, seeing the look in people's eyes, seeing how loved they feel when I do things I promised to do, and so forth is a reward in and of itself. But I also think about what God said. In James chapter four, which you probably know quite well, the Bible talks about how you're only here for a little while, you need to make the most of your time. Each day is important. We want to carry out things that matter, you know all that stuff. We talk about it a lot. In verse 17, at the end of that section about your life being like a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away, the Bible says, therefore, to the one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin. Now, on a basic level, we understand that entirely. If I know it's the right thing to do today, and that chapter is about urgency, it's about making the most of the day while you have it. If I know that visiting that person is the right thing to do, that's what I need to do. If I know that sending that email of explanation or encouragement is the right thing to do, I need to do it. If I know that Bible reading is the right thing to do, to not do it would be a sin, because I know it's the right thing. But I have often struggled with this follow-up question. What if I forget? What if I knew the right thing to do and then I totally forgot it? What if I get busy with other things? What if it slips my mind? Does the Lord come back and say, Well, you knew the right thing to do and you didn't do it, but you know, you've got a poor memory, so no big deal. Now I know that the mercies of the Lord and God's grace and patience are incredible, so I'm not saying that He waits to crush me when I forget something. But I am questioning, if I can just be honest with you, how much inactivity can I write off as a poor memory and God wink at it? Think about things like being at church and seeing a visitor return, and you know what the right thing to do is walk up to them, say their name, express appreciation, ask them to sit with you, whatever, but instead you think I just totally forgot their name and now I'm embarrassed. They probably remember my name and it's going to be awkward, and I think I'll just let somebody else tackle that. But what are we saying? Are we saying, well, it was the right thing to do, but I didn't do it and it's no big deal? Or are we saying, we need to get better? I need to find a way to recall that man's name. I need to get back on task here and do what is right. Well, I feel that all the time, but I'm telling you, the memory doesn't get better just because you want it to. We need help. We need a strategy for success, and so in the back half of this episode, I want to talk to you about the value of three words. Write it down. Now before we go through a list of what it is, and I do have a list for you, you may want to, I don't know, write that down in a minute. Up to you, totally up to you. Let me start with what we mean by write it down. I'm a big pencil guy, I love mechanical pencils, I write in the margins of my Bible, I underline things of value, I do the journal every morning in pencil, it lasts plenty long enough, and you can erase and change things along the way. But let's just be clear, it doesn't have to be a pencil and paper, does it? If there is something that needs to be noted, there are a variety of ways to do that. If you have a smartphone or an iPad or something like that, make sure your notes app is easy to find. Make sure that if you hear a new name or you make a new commitment, or you just have a new awesome thought about faith in God, make sure you can get that recorded quickly before it slips away. In our culture of social media and short attention spans, on top of just regular old mental deficiencies like mine, you may not have long to get this thing written down. So make sure you have something close by. So I just want to be clear about that. It could be digital. In fact, I take a lot of notes digitally. The notes section on my phone probably has hundreds, if not over a thousand, entries. But I needed to put them there and then go back and reflect on them later in the week to make sure I didn't overlook something. Now again, I do recommend paper and pencil. First of all, at church, for me, at church, I don't like to pull out my cell phone. I think there's so much connotation of distraction that's associated with it that I would much rather pull a piece of paper out of my pocket and a pen and write down what someone is saying to me or asking of me or their name or something like that. But it doesn't matter. The point is find something that works for you. Keep it with you all the time. Shouldn't be hard if we're talking about a notepad or paper and pencil or your phone. Okay, let me get into a list of things that are worth writing down. I'm speaking from my own experience in the Excel Still More journey this year and what has gotten better in my own life. I'm speaking from things that my wife and daughter in particular have expressed to me and what I've seen in others. Here are a couple of things we should begin with. Number one, find time to write down the product of your Bible study. The idea of reading the word is great. The Bible says it is to be read, but it's also to be considered, meditated upon, studied, remembered and applied. If all we're doing in the morning is just reading a chapter, closing it, and going about our day, we will begin to forget. Now you guys remember the wicker basket lesson from some weeks ago. There's still value in that. But really cleaning that bucket requires an additional step. And that step is writing it down. Every morning in the Excel Stillmore three-month journal, you guys remember that. You don't have to have that. You can use your iPad or a notepad, but if you want to go to Excelstillmore.life and order it, every day it has a section where I read a chapter in the Bible and then I write down observations. I write down what I learned, what I see, what it means to me. This has done incredible things to help me remember throughout the day and the week the content of what I read. When you're at worship services in a Bible class, take notes. Write down things of interest. If you have a Bible with margins, make notes on interesting things that you see or learn. During the sermon, take notes. We teach our kids to take notes. First of all, very few people fall asleep with a pencil in their hand. It's just dangerous, keeps them awake. But also, they remember it on Tuesday. My six-year-old remembers the sermon topic on Tuesday because she wrote it down while she was listening. Here's another one. Write down some prayers. Have you ever written out your prayer? One of the things we do in the journal every morning is we ask beautiful questions, and there's a paragraph section where you write out questions to God. You write your prayers. I don't write all my prayers all day long, but I at least write two in that journal every morning. When I'm writing about asking beautiful questions, and when I'm writing about level three gratitude, I put those in the form of prayer. Think about the senses that you're adding to the activity. If you're praying in your own mind with your eyes closed, that's great. But you're only using your thoughts, your inner monologue. When you're writing your prayers, you're using those things, but you're also using your eyes to see it on the paper, and you're using your hand to touch the paper and create the words as they come off your pencil. The added elements of the senses has paid great dividends for me. Number three, write down stuff you want to do today. We've done a lot of episodes on this, but if you don't plan your day, the day will just dump itself on your shoulders. You'll end up doing a lot of things that weren't important, and you will have forgotten the things that were. So every day on the right side of the journal, and I won't go through all the journal stuff with you, but I write down that one frog I'm going to eat today. It's important, I wrote it down, I'm not going to forget it. I write down one or two daily spiritual highlights, those things from James 4 that I know are the right thing to do, and I'm going to remember to do it. Just the act of writing down your schedule, your frog, and your highlight will increase your chances of remembering it. And then, of course, the added benefit is throughout the day I can look back into the daily entry of the journal and very quickly and easily reread all of those things. Okay, let's move on to people. Write down names. When you meet people, write down their name. We did an episode a long time ago called What's My Name? And when you address someone by their name, it instantly builds rapport and connection and trust. When you forget their name and you start using general language like, hey, you human, it just loses its impact. When someone tells me their name, I try to say it back to them in some way that fits in the conversation, so I've heard it and said it, and then turn around and before I get far, write it down. I can't even begin to tell you how well that helps the memory and how useful it is later. Okay, here are a couple of others. When you make a commitment to do something for someone else, write it down. Writing down those commitments will help you accomplish them and it will also give you more courage long term to make more commitments. When you start forgetting your commitments, you will not have the courage to make them. Or you'll tell the person, I'll try to do this, but I don't know, I've got such a terrible memory. That's not a great thing to say to someone. It says that my deficiencies are more powerful than their needs. Instead, write down what you commit to do for people, and you'll find that following through will build your courage. Okay, so midway through this episode, I decided not to give you like a 15-point list. I think you already know the areas where you need to make improvements. Write them down. I will say one final thing though. When you have ideas, considerations about God, Eureka moments of faith and life, write those things down. People ask me a lot, how do you come up with all of these episodes? Seventy episodes. How can you just sit down and have an idea? Well, I can't. But while I'm driving down the road thinking about God, an idea will hit me and I'll speak it to my phone. Or while I'm brushing my teeth in the morning, I get most of the good ideas brushing the old teeth. I rush over to a notepad and I write it down. I can tell you that literally one half of the episodes we've recorded would not be in existence if I had counted on myself to remember it until I got to the office to record it. But instead, I just look back at those notes, it instantly reignites that thought, and study follows. I guess what I'm saying is recalling stuff is kind of awesome and it leads to growth instead of restarting back at square one as a result of forgetfulness. So let me say this to you. And I pray in the name of the Lord you will do them. People you can encourage, things that you can learn. If you come across something important and you want to make it real and you want to make it last, and you know that God can use it, take a moment and write it down. Thank you so much for listening today. We encourage you to check out the website excelstillmore.life, where you can subscribe to emails, order the three-month journal, or check out past episodes. As always, please consider sharing this with people in your life who you think we can help. And whatever you do today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, excel still more.