Quick Capture

Quick Capture is an inbox for whatever just occurred to you. Tap the button from anywhere, type one line, save. Four seconds. Later, you open the inbox and deal with the lot. Rate and Prioritise turns a raw thought into a real action. Discard gets rid of it. Oldest first. The separation is the method. Capturing and deciding are different jobs, and doing them at the same time is what stops people capturing at all, because there is a form in the way. This comes from David Allen's Getting Things Done, published in 2001. Allen's central observation is that the mind is poor at storing things and keeps reminding you about them at useless moments, usually at two in the morning. Anything held only in your head costs you attention continuously, whether you are working on it or not. Get it out, into something you trust, and the background noise goes down. The rule is to capture everything. Include the things that turn out not to matter. Filter at the point of capture, and you will start filtering out the important ones too. Then empty the inbox regularly. A capture list you never process becomes another thing you are ignoring, which is worse than not having one.