In My Mind 21 - Your brain doesn't remember ideas, Being Kind vs Being Nice, The Talking, Listening Ratio

In My Mind is my little brain dump of things I've been thinking about in the past week.

Your brain is good at having ideas, not storing them

I catch myself in a trap every single week. Sometimes it's daily, sometimes every few days. The trap is believing that your brain cares as much about things as you do and in caring about them will remind you of those things when you next need them. I have an idea - something I can't act on in that moment but would be good to pursue in a few hours, or at the weekend. Yet when that time comes I'm left looking like that John Travolta meme - circling around trying my hardest to conjure that idea again.

In his book Getting Things Done (first published in 2001), David Allen wrote about the brain in terms of a computer - "Your conscious mind, like the computer screen, is a focusing tool, not a storage place. You can think about only two or three things at once." So when you have a thought or idea, if it isn't stored somewhere externally, you might as well have not had the thought in the first place. Allen wrote about this long before TikTok, YouTube shorts and the 5 second attention span so it's only more true now than ever. So what do I do to combat this? Quite a few things, actually. Allen writes about using 'collection tools' such as a physical in-tray for letters, a notebook, and email inboxes for gathering your thoughts and tasks together in trusted locations. When you have an idea, or a new task that you need to work on, you add it to one of these locations to be uncovered during the 'Processing' stage.

For me that looks like Todoist (a to-do list application that runs on all my devices), a physical notebook that I carry everywhere I go (in case I can't get to Todoist), Obsidian (which I also use to write these newsletters), and Google calendar (for events). If something is going to happen in my life it has to exist in one of these 4 places. If it is a task it goes into Todoist, if it's an event or somewhere I need to be it goes into Google Calendar, and if it's a thought that needs fleshing out at another point it lives in Obsidian or my paper notebook. Although, in truth, if the thought is worth its weight it ends up in Obsidian even if it was written on paper initially. This is the first step to getting more clarity and remembering more things. The second step is to grasp the concept of "2 minute just do its". The concept is if a task will take less than 2 minutes of your time, stop thinking about it and just get it done. If you need to send a text to someone, just do it. If you need to get something out your car before you forget, just do it. Even if you have to walk up the stairs to close the bedroom window, just do it. In the time it takes to write it down you could have solved the issue. Do it and move on.

I'm intrigued how many people have heard of David Allen's book. It changed the way I think about handling multiple projects at once and would be keen to share more if others find it useful.

Being Kind vs Being Nice

On the face of it these two things don't sound too dissimilar. Kind and Nice or synonyms, right? Not in the way I've come to think about them. See for me, being kind is more akin to being honest, despite someone's feelings while being nice is protecting someone's feelings even if it means being dishonest.

An example might be when your girlfriend stands in front of you asking your opinion on an outfit she is planning to wear out. If you don't like the outfit, you are faced with two options, inform her of your honest opinion potentially hurting her feelings but making her aware of how the outfit actually looks, or hiding your opinion and saying "you look great" even though the outfit is a horror show. The kind thing would be to tell her you don't like the outfit, explain why, and help select a new outfit. Short term pain, for a better outcome long term. The opposite, being nice, is to hide your opinion, let your girlfriend go out in an outfit that doesn't suit her and face the rest of the world telling her she doesn't look right with stares and giggles from across the room. Another example might be having a conversation with a colleague about their work. If you were being nice you might ask them if there's anything they're struggling with, secretly hoping they'll hand it over so you can do it properly yourself. Being kind would be to tell them directly that their work isn't hitting the mark.

Effectively being nice is focused on politeness and being liked while being kind is based in care and doing what is best for someone long term. This was taken to another level with the book Radical Candor and spoken about a lot by Gary Vaynerchuk who speaks about this a lot in terms of calling out low performers early in a kind, respectful way that allows them to change for the better while feeling supported so they can work more effectively for the business and for themselves. The 'kind' in this is allowing someone the chance to improve while also not catching them off guard by surprising them when they thought they were doing a good job.

In a British society, this sounds very abstract. We couldn't possible step out and talk badly about someone, especially to their face, but I think it's an incredibly useful skill to have if you want what's best for the people around you. Have difficult conversations, full of empathy and support. Don't target someone, guide them and make them aware of the issues and how you can help.

The Talking, Listening ratio

I recently completed a leadership and management course at work and learned lots of useful things to help working with other people, leading teams and getting the best out of myself and others. But one of the most useful things was being reminded of the idea of the talking, listening ratio. Our tutor asked us to say our facial features. We said "one mouth, two eyes, two ears, and a nose". He said "exactly, so what ratio should you use them in?". Ignoring the nose, we should use our eyes and ears twice as much as our mouths. In a modern world where we're so keen to share our own opinions we forget that there's a big skill in knowing when to shut up and listen. We so often now listen to respond rather than listening to understand - we allow people enough time to talk so we can put together a counterargument rather than letting them finish what they're saying so we can learn from them and gain new perspectives.

I believe that a lot of the interpersonal issues that happen in today's world comes from the written word (he says, writing a newsletter). What I mean is how many conversations now happen by text when the word count is restricted by how long you can stand typing into your phone for. As someone who enjoys writing (and talking) I like getting my point across no matter how many words it takes but I've noticed a brevity come from friends and family in their messages as if there's a medal up for grabs for the person who can send their message in the fewest number of words. In person, or even on a phone call, we have the ability to speak words quicker than most people can type or read. The word count doesn't even factor, we expand our stories and share fully what we are thinking in a way that isn't used in text form. So when someone replies to your message or posts something on social media you don't get the full picture of what they're trying to say or the tone it's been written in. From that you make a judgement, a potentially incorrect judgement that creates a fracture in the conversation, between your two sides there lies a gap in understanding that gets filled with your own perspectives, your own experiences. Suddenly we respond without the full picture, using our own paintbrush to complete the image, without knowing where the other person was coming from. Listen more, learn more.