What do I do about topics I find interesting and relevant to my job, hobboes, interests and what not?
I put them on a list, either as an item in Slack, a handwritten note on the little booklet I have on my desk, a draft post on our CMS or somewhere else.
It feels good to do so, I have taken care of it, it won’t get lost, and eventually I will check the topic and determine if it was a good idea or perhaps best to quietly discard it.
Writing things up on a to-do list makes me calmer, happier, not everlasting bliss, but no angst, anxiety or fear about things I might forget.
This will be followed hy discomfort later on if I let the lists grow too long. Nagging feeling of topics I should do something about is unpleasant and occasionally stressful. Yeccch, all those and Monday morning, give me a break!
What helps me is a little inner voice that asks which items need attention now (bills to pay, taxes, jobs to assign to my crew etc), maybe later (that blog post, interesting research, new handcrafting technique), and those that may have sounded good at the time but are not worth the mental burden and nagging feeling of overtly long to-do lists.
I’ve heard that most humans make lists and that lists make us feel better. Turns out that listing things and processing the list, that feeling of accomplishment improves wellbeing.
We humans, we the people are happier when there is a sense on being in control, and we are also more productive.
Ainolabs is developing Professional Mentor service to be the little inner voice to help you (and us) with these two simple yet powerful aspects:
1) make a todo list and 2) check and prioritize it regularly.
Simple as that, brief discussion with the Pro Mentor, almost like rubberducking but better.
Change is innovation 