Hello everyone, this is Helen Huang @ Organizing, based in Beijing, China.In order to better learn and practice the YiXiaoNeng Time Management System, after finished publishing 100 Chinese articles, I decided to continue writing and publishing a daily English article in another 100 days based on the "YeWuBin Time Management 100 Episodes" audio program. Today is the 105th day.

Today's topic is: Time management relies not on feeling, but on system.

In the last class, I talked about how life is not about how many things you completed, but in doing critical things with your heart and soul, and doing them to the best of your ability. I also talked about focusing on the top 20% of the most important things. This is the essence of time management that the father of management, Peter Drucker, taught us. I also talked about Stephen Covey's lesson that we need to complete important but non-urgent matters first, since we're too busy accomplishing the immediately urgent matters, how can we ever complete these important  non-urgent matters? Finally I talked about the importance of the GTD method. Here, GTD is short for Getting Things Done. It is an American slang term, meaning GaoDing in Chinese. This is also the name of 3 books: Getting Things Done I, II and III, written by am American author David Allen.

At that time, I felt so happy and fortunate to have discovered this great book. I learned the critical lesson needed to be more productive. Today I'm going to share with you a critical idea called our brain is CPU, not a hard disk. 

We all have brain, but not all of us know the features of our brain. What is interesting is that all three philosophical thoughts in China emphasized the same topic, and then repeatedly talked about one thing, that is to live in the present. Time is the present. We can't access the past or the future during the present moment, but we can feel the present at this time. 

Even in Buddhist texts, there is the concept of absent minded, may explain why that concept appeals and what it means. 

We have new ideas at all times. When we leave the task unfinished, we will think about what we will do, what we should do, and what we must do, and so on. We will think about our tasks, will even think about other people's tasks, and as long as these matters remain unfinished, we will feel anxiety. 

However, it's not easy for us to remember details. How many pages can you remember a book you read yesterday? We will remember very little. And it's really difficult for brain to remember details.So, if without accomplished tasks immediately, we will forget that. And then, of course, we will not worry about them. As long as we will not worry about that, we will be easy for us to forget them. 

Also, when more and more tasks accumulated, we will also begin to forget tasks. In reality then, our brains are anxiety to think not memorize. But we often use it for memorizing. It's very hard to memorize because the brain's store capacity is limit. Therefore, as the storage reaches its capacity, we become anxious about these unfinished matters. 

Then what happens? Well, we are usually distracted. Distraction makes it hard to concentrate, so according to David Allen in summary, we should live in the present and be attentive for when to get things done. But then what is the attention? It means no distraction. What does no distraction mean? It means that you have no unfinished tasks. 

While distraction means that you have unfinished tasks, so we can't rely on our brain to manage ourselves, we must rely on a system, and this system should be reliable. Papers and pens can count as a reliable system, but it is the Internet age, so we are better of using mobile phones. We need to record all of the thoughts in our brain. It's like a saying that a poor ability to write is always better than a very good memory. 

When we write down all matters, our brain is empty. Usually at this point, many of my students will tell me: Teacher, I know about what you mean, I do write everything down, but have you thought about at what time you actually wrote things down? If you're like most people, you write things down only during the busy times, your urgent times, or during your meetings. When do you write about things from your daily life? Have you written about what you want to accomplish and the distant future? So you must record things apart from focused on comprehension, in other words, your collection of tasks and thoughts are usually far from comprehension. 

Today I tell you to drive all things from your brain. Do not use your brain to memorize matters. You need a useful and reliable tool to capture these thoughts. It will be better for the tool to be at your hand at any given moment. You can use paper and pen, you'll only throw it away afterwards. It's more efficient and effective to record matters with mobile phones or computers. Mobile phone is the most convenient tool. Now we have a lot of phone apps that help us accomplish these tasks nicely. Later I will share some of these tools with you. 

When you have these advanced tools at your hand, you can record matters at any time. And when you can do this, your brain will be relaxed. And the more reliable the tool is, the more your brain will rely on the tools. Then your brain can spend less time memorizing, and more time and energy doing what it's supposed to do. 

Think, every day, when you have a new task, or a worry, or new idea, you can add them to your records. Of course, it's just the first step to write them down. But this is the essence of the idea of GTD - Getting Things Done. Then we'll need a process to solve the problem and manage the time. This will be shown in the next class. 

Thank you being with me today. Have a wonderful day!