Ramit Sethi explains how to stop hoarding ideas and actually use them. Save useful stuff into searchable folders, then review every 4 to 6 weeks for 30 to 45 minutes. The point: execution beats consuming more content.
All right, here's a question today on time management and productivity from Rick. Rick, I read a lot of influential things every day from people like you, Tim Ferriss, Ryan Holiday, etc. All the topics you discuss and people you link to are insightful and usually have a great deal of value and takeaways. However, even when distilling it down to bullet points, it can still all be a lot to take in and often it's easy to forget some of it. What is the process that you use to internalize information and make it a part of your everyday thinking rather than just another sheet of notepaper? All right, this is a good question because more and more we're inundated with information and the question is, how do we actually apply it? I've always said I would rather have you read one book and apply it than read 25 books and do nothing with it. Execution matters far more than being 100% of the way knowledgeable. So here's what I do. Basically, whenever I find something that I know one day I'm going to find useful, I will file it away. So let's say I'm starting to think about creating a course on starting an online business, let's say, and I've never done that, but three years from now or five years from now, I have even a suspicion I might do it. Anytime I find something interesting on that topic, I'm going to save it in my delicious online bookmarks. Or let's say I get an email from someone that's like, hey Ramit, here's how to create an amazing wedding toast and I find it interesting. Or maybe I think I'm going to create a course or I'm going to need it one day because I'm giving a toast. I'm going to save that. Now what happens is I don't need that today, but it's out of my head and I know when the time comes to give a toast, I'm going to search Gmail. I'm going to find wedding toast done. So it allows me to just remove everything from my head and put it in a place where later I can find it. That's my use it later system. Here's another example. I get emails from people. Sometimes I think they're really interesting and I'd like to meet them. So I save them in a special tag in Gmail called Los Angeles or Seattle or San Francisco or whatever. And whenever I go to those cities, I just look at those list of people and I'll send a quick email. Hey, want to grab coffee, want to get a drink. Again, out of my head, but I know when I'm going to San Francisco, New York, Austin, Texas, I have a list of people that I can meet. It's out of my head, but it's ready to be found when the time is right. Now, the other thing you mentioned is I create these bullet points on a piece of paper, but how do I remember to refer back to them? So what I do is every four to six weeks, I will just schedule like 30 minutes or 45 minutes and I'll go review all the notes that I've taken on books that I've read. I read a lot of books on Kindle now. I'll highlight stuff, I'll take notes, and it's easy to just do that once and then never read it again. Every four to six weeks, I want to go back, reread these notes, which doesn't take that long, and I want to apply it to whatever I'm working on at that time. Sometimes a note that I take won't make any sense to today, tomorrow, next year, but two years from now, I'm going to go back and see that note and I'm going to be like, oh, got it. And it allows me to take the notes that I've captured a month ago, a year ago, three years ago, and apply it to what I'm working on right now. So I hope that helps. That's a great question. There's a whole bunch more productivity tips you can learn. Get on my email list and I'll be happy to share more. Thanks very much. It.
