The average employee switches between different apps and websites 1,200 times per day1. This "toggling" time consumes ~4 hours per week.
And of course work isn’t our only identity. We are also parents, partners, siblings, daughters, caregivers, friends, community members. We are “toggling” and context switching through life, bombarded by to-do lists as well as grand ideas of things we want to watch, cook, read, build, improve.
Picture this: you’re finishing a client proposal when the idea hits - you should automate your invoice reminders. 45 minutes later you’ve watched three Make.com tutorials and your proposal is still blank. And now your kid’s daycare just messaged that you need to bring in more diapers.
And that’s just an average Tuesday. (it me both in my personal and professional life.)
It’s hard to reach the finish line of one project, when you create ten more starting lines.
What I’ve Tried (That Wasn’t Working)
Writing ideas down —> Multiple notebooks, and disparate tear off sheets all across my house.
Whiteboard to-do list —> Ignored / forget it.
Google Calendar tasks —> Overwhelmed.
Notion —> Browser-heavy.
TickTick —> Another app to maintain.
The problem wasn't the tools. It was that capturing ideas still required enough effort that I'd interrupt my flow for fear of losing them. And even when I jotted them down, they were in 12 different places and aggregating them became yet another task.
WHAT ACTUALLY WORKS
Capture your idea to offload the cognitive burden.
Then immediately go back to what you were doing.
Which leads us to…