SYSTEMS OVER MEMORY

The more responsibilities you have, the less you should rely on memory.

I was reminded of this while reading about the Harvard Business School case method.

Unlike a traditional lecture, professors facilitate discussions among roughly 80 students, where class participation forms part of each student's grade. That raises an obvious question.

How do they remember who made a thoughtful comment?

One tool they use is a seating chart with student photos. By matching faces to names and knowing exactly where each student is seated, professors can accurately track participation throughout the discussion.

They rely on systems, not memory.

The same principle applies to real estate brokerage.

As brokers, we're constantly interrupted.

A client calls while you're showing a property. Another sends a message while you're driving. A seller asks for an update while you're negotiating another transaction.

If you try to keep everything in your head, sooner or later you'll forget something.

The solution is simple: every new task should go into a single inbox.

For me, that's Google Tasks because my phone is always with me. The goal isn't to organize the task or word it perfectly. It's simply to capture the thought in five seconds or less before it disappears.

Sometimes all I type is "painter contact." That's enough to remind me later that I need to send a client the painter's contact information.

The next morning, when I'm at my computer, I review a more structured task list in Google Sheets.

One of my recurring tasks is to process everything I've captured in Google Tasks. I transfer each item into the spreadsheet, where I assign a due date and record when the task was created and last updated.

The specific apps don't matter. Google Tasks and Google Sheets simply happen to be the tools that work for me (and they're free).

Harvard's system happens to be a seating chart. Mine happens to be writing every task down within five seconds.

The tools are different but the principle is the same: build a system that works for you.