I have mentioned before my habit — sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but never fully abandoned — of writing down what I want to do on various time scales: day, week, month (or, at work, quarter), year. For my personal goals, I do this in a modified bullet journal form in a Leuchtturm1917 A5 dot grid notebook. At work, I regularly use a tool like Obsidian or Bear. In every case, I find it quite surprising how effective it can be simply to have written down what I want to do.

The first reason is that as long as I’m doing it right, writing down my goals forces me to decide, of the many things I could do, which I will do. Just these three big projects, this year. Just these chunks of those projects, this month. Three times working on each of those this week. This in the morning, that in the evening, today.

The second reason is that writing it down leaves a mark in my mind no less than on paper. It is as if I am making myself a little promise, and the reminder that those dots are there, waiting to be marked off once I have accomplished the goals, lingers in my thoughts throughout the day. Indeed, even as I write these words, I am very aware of the time and my goal of composing some music this morning: I had better stop writing this and get to that if I am going to accomplish that!

The writing is not itself the key. The key is choosing and remembering. Writing is a really great tool for helping myself choose and remember, though.