Don’t trust your Memory
Overestimating is one the biggest flaws of the Human Race. We especially tend to overestimate our memory. I must admit I’ve met a few people in my life who seem to remember everything, but they are exceptions to the rule. And even for those people, you could argue if our brain is meant for storage or processing.
But let’s broaden our perspective. What if you’re working on a team and you just discovered how to do something. If you remember it, then how will the rest of the team know? That’s right; they won’t!
So even if you’re a memory wizard, this won’t help if you want others to benefit from your knowledge.
Knowledge Base to the rescue!
I have a solution for you that works for individuals as well as for teams.
And that is CREATE A KNOWLEDGE BASE.
You’re probably thinking about some complicated system now, but that’s not what I mean.
I just want you to write things down that can be of use for later reference. When writing things down you should take care of a few simple steps:
- Store everything you write as much as possible in one place
Be sure that the information you write down is easily accessible (that means that you should use a digital solution) - Don’t overcomplicate things. Putting information in should be simple, getting information out should be even simpler
- Be disciplined. Take care that you consistently write things down.
The Tools you can use
There are all kinds of tools out there that can help make life easier for you. But you can also just create a searchable folder on your PC, your Mac, on your network or in the cloud.
I use Evernote for this.
I’ve said it before in other posts and video’s, when you have a system like this in place you will notice that the longer you use it, the more useful it will become. After some time the trust in your system grows and grows, and you know that you can retrieve any information whenever you want it.
So don’t rely on your memory, even if it’s great. Creating your personal knowledge base or a knowledge base for your team can help you more than you can probably imagine.
Thanks so much for being here.
See you on the next one!
