Many years ago I heard a motivational speaker talk about value of OPE (other people's experiences). His point was that although "experience is the best teacher", it takes too long to learn and it's too painful to learn solely from our own experiences. The easiest way to succeed is to harness the power of OPE.
Pride stops many of us. I was listening to a podcast by Merlin Mann and he was talking about why some people don't write things down. It's simple: pride. They think they can carry all their to-dos abound in their head and consider it an insult to have to stoop to writing them down or typing them in. Rather than having the embarrassment of forgetting something or the stress of carrying all those things in your head, why not use OPE. OPE says that if you get all your to-dos out of your head, you free up your awesome mind to have more creative thoughts.
So . . . when you are struggling in familiar territory or venturing out into new territory: find someone who has been there, listen to their advice, get over your pride, save yourself some time and energy, and just try what they tell you.
See also
This post also appears on CE On Time .
I totally agree. I used to keep every single thing in my head untill finally I realised that I keep missing things. Then one day I went to that gathering, where IT people show their new products and I found out about this little app http://www.wrike.com. I heard about the getting things done method by Dave Allen and this tool supports the idea http://www.wrike.com/blog/9/4/2007/Getting_things_done_with_Wrike_saves_us_hours. Of cause I hade to make myself put everything in to he system. But then I realised the benefit - I save up to 40 minutes each day!
Posted by: Gimlor Brims | October 27, 2007 at 01:32
Gimlor:
Thanks for the comment.
I'll have to check out wrike.
It's always great to hear about someone getting back a bit of their life.
Craig
Posted by: Craig Huggart | October 27, 2007 at 04:37