The Power of Writing Things Down (or how NOT writing things down led me to watching porn)

We TOTALLY underestimate the importance of writing things down.  And it doesn't have to be the "old-timey" method of putting pen to paper.  It can be via typing into your iPad or whatever doohickey you kids use nowadays.

image via nickdelgado.com

The CRUCIAL thing is that you can get to it quickly and you don't lose what you wrote.  Because then what's the point, right?  You just thought of the greatest Twitterism EVER and even got to your McDonald's napkin in time to document it perfectly word for word. And then later that night you realize you chucked that nugget of wisdom/comedy/bitterness-poking-at-some-minority-group into the garbage with your Big Mac crumbs. Yes, you will never get that back. Sad face.

I know. I know.  I tend to lose a couple of brilliant Facebook status updates while naked in the shower. (That naked part was quite redundant. I apologize.)  By the time I'm out...*poof. Gone are those gems.

But now let's get to the other reasons why writing things down is a good thing.

If you write down your goals and aspirations, you are then visualizing this and bringing it more to a possibility.  Oprah did this, and look where she is now.  Ok, I don't know if she did it, but I'm pretty sure she did.  She's all about empowering yourself and offering up ways to do so.  And though I won't be referencing particular research that supports this idea, I have read enough self-actualization/help books to know that visualizing is KEY.  You must have a plan!  And it should be specific!  When will you complete this by, and what will you do in order to do so.

image via melvinchong.com

I am living proof that it works. When I write down my to-do's, they get done.  It may take a day, a week, or months, but they get done (I didn't follow the "deadline" aspect of writing down my goals apparently.)  That is how I get my taxes done, albeit with an extension, and why my friend get photos I promised her of her 30th birthday party on the eve of her 31st birthday.  It still gets done, folks!

Another example of how much writing things down can greatly affect your life is scheduling. On my free days, if I don't write down a schedule, I get royally screwed.  You'd think it's pretty easy to check off a mental list of tasks and get them done.  NO.

Somehow, if I don't treat myself like a baby adhering to strict feeding schedule, I get sucked into a time warp in which what seems like 5 minutes watching kittens fall off refrigerators on YouTube is in reality 5 hours.  And then there's that eery way that YouTube shuffles you through their videos in a demonic way that leads to brain-bleeding inducing videos such as:




Then a comment under the vid on her being a porn star (is she or isn't she??) leads me to do some Googling (WHY? I don't know. I always wonder what roads bring one to that destination.) And then all these porn windows pop up, and my computer gets all these crazy cookies and viruses, my browsing history gets splattered all over my Facebook so that I'm labeled as some porn-addicted deviant, my computer explodes with all of my precious drafts of soon-to-be-successful movie scripts and novels, and then my life is over.

So not all of that is true. But now do you see why you should write things down.

Let me know how it goes for you!