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What I do is:

- For meetings, events, social obligations, I carry a small paper-based diary.

- For ideas and thoughts, I write them down. The idea is that the act of writing something down aids recall. For example, story and blog ideas go in a A5 notebook that I carry around with me, and I commit them to a digitally backed up document as soon as possible. Note-to-self lifestyle advice goes in my bedside drawer, to check on if I ever feel like I've forgotten anything.

- For things to learn and interesting articles, I don't do anything and keep my fingers crossed that the salient bits will have rubbed off on me, lurking in my subconscious and subtly improving my life forever after.

I'm not 100% sure that last one works quite that well.



This is pretty close to what I do, but I also try and keep track of what I read. To do this, I just bookmark everything I read in pinboard so if I remember some tendril of a thing, I can search for it. In general my memory is horrible, every little bit helps.


What would you do to improve how your subconscious works?




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