Dylan Schiemann

I was going to write a blog post on being absent-minded, but I forgot what I wanted to write about. Kind of like when I joined the procrastinator’s meetup group, only to find out they hadn’t gotten around to meeting up yet.

Seriously though, I’m an extremely absent-minded person because I’m very in the moment. I get fully immersed into whatever I’m experiencing, and try to let the rest of the world drift away. It’s terrible for phone conversations because I listen, discuss what to do, but then need someone to send me an email or file a ticket on me or else I’ll never remember to follow-up because I’ll be in the next moment.

So, I’ve been looking for ways to fight this tendency. I used to take notes, or create todo lists but then I would forget to look at the notes. I end up finding the notes a month later, realize I’ve done half of the things on them, and the rest I’ve either flaked on or were not that important to begin with.

Now, I sort of end each conversation or experience I’m having with a mental list of the most important things I promised to do. And then I act on them before the next thing comes up to distract me. This means no immediate back-to-back meetings any more, because if I’m going to do something, it needs to be done right away. It gives me the added bonus of removing clutter from my life.

I’m sure I had something much more insightful to say, but for now, not so much.

(For those of you reading this on Facebook, this post is auto-imported from my blog: http://dylanschiemann.com/2010/12/29/absent-minded/ ).