Notes on doing it — Day #13: Kill your problems before they become problems

Photo by hk on Unsplash

Today I’ve ordered a handful of small note books. I intend on having them with me at all time. Up until this point I’ve taken notes for these blog posts on my phone whenever inspiration has struck me. The problem with that is that it leaves me with my phone in my hand. That’s bad news for my creativity and productivity.

Having my phone in hand always leads me to browse social media for no reason whatsoever. That’s a bad habit. And the easiest way I’ve found to get rid of bad habits is eliminating the cues (phone in hand in this example), that leads to the undesired actions (browsing social media).

This is actually a page right out of ad man Dave Trotts book. He often talks about Upstream Thinking. It’s all about not attacking the problem it self, but all the things that are creating the problem.

“Don’t face it the issue head-on, get upstream and change the context.” — Dave Trott