Too busy to read?

A big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can't do anything about them. It has no sense of past or future. That means as soon as you tell yourself that you might need to do something, and store it only in your head, there's a part of you that thinks you should be doing that something all the time. Everything you've told yourself you ought to do, it thinks you should be doing right now. Frankly, as soon as you have two things to do stored only in your mind, you've generated personal failure, because you can't do them both at the same time. This produces a pervasive stress factor whose source can't be pinpointed.

Or his emphasis, explained throughout the book, on relying on an "external brain"--that is, tools that can do routine categorizing and remembering for us, from simple folders in which to store receipts to established places in which you will always put keys, glasses, or other things you don't want to hunt for each time.

The most fundamental principle of the organized mind, the one most critical to keeping us from forgetting or losing things, is to shift the burden of organizing from our brains to the external world.

Historically, the ultimate brain extenders were books, keeping track of centuries' worth of collected knowledge that we can access when we need it. Perhaps they still are.

The best time-management technique is to ensure you have captured every single thing that has your attention, or should have your attention, by writing it down. The goal is to get projects and situations off your mind but not to lose any potentially useful ideas--externalizing your frontal lobes. Then you can step back and look at your list from an observer standpoint and not let yourself be driven by what's the latest and loudest in your head