How I have stayed motivated for a whole year.
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What get’s measured, get’s managed.
Over the years I have used dozens of formulas in an attempt to keep me on track.
Back in 2009, I used ‘notes’ on the iPhone 3gs and at the time I thought it was great, after some time I would forget to open the app and thus forget about it and when I finally remembered to check, the idea seemed like gibberish or was outdated.
Some of my ideas required pictures or drawings to support them so I jumped onto an app called Evernote. Some time passed until I realised that it didn’t work for me, then after Evernote partnered with Moleskine I jumped from the digital world and into the journaling world of Moleskine.
I currently have a box filled with Moleskine’s (they are high-quality journals made popular for two reasons; The most obvious and well-known reason is that these notebooks were used by the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Vincent van Gogh among others. They were used quite a bit in their travels and used frequently. Two; They are very durable.), I still carry one in my bag most days, the ones in the box are labelled 1 through to 17 and contain my thoughts and ideas on magic.
When I started to use them for the business side of magic AKA getting gig’s etc it just didn’t work! Reason being, you can close them, and then the ideas are forgotten about, much like the notes app on my trusted iPhone 3gs.
I have also used; voice recordings, whiteboards and I have even taped parcel paper on the wall to write on.
So fast forward to now… how do I keep on track?
How is it that I have stayed productive for a whole year?
Post-its!
I started off by putting one on the front room wall with the intention of remembering something for the next day, it worked…
I mean, obviously it worked, I had a luminous green post-it note stuck on the wall!
I compleated that task and pulled the sticky note off the wall, and to my wife's horror, I had put about 7 more in its place.
Some of them were taken down and replaced very quickly, others a little slower, and before long I had all the top notes as categories and they stayed.
The ones below were regularly maintained and replaced and I just kept doing it. The aim was (and still is) to clear the wall and once again make the wife happy but the compulsion and drive to keep my colourful wall up allows the ideas to flow.
Only lately I have tried another way, it works in nicely with the post-it wall and has helped boost my productivity even further.
This is the secret that is used in space shuttle launches, presidential visits, it was even used on December 17, 1903 when Wilbur and Orville Wright made four brief flights at Kitty Hawk with their first powered aircraft.
So what is it?
A CHECKLIST!
Each day I get a pen and paper, stare at my wall and write down the ones I think I could get done that day, then draw boxes next to each one. It’s gotten to the point I can’t relax until they are all ticked off.
It’s not super complicated, these are simple methods that have been tried and tested millions of times and they work.
Thanks for reading, now I can tick this off of the list and remove the post-it “write blog” off of my wall.
-Josh Maddocks 2020