Page 55 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

Paulism: Applying Simple Rules enables companies and people to be focussed and on track with goals and enable quick decisions to be made without emotion.
2.5 Writing things down
It amazes me that people go to meetings without notepads or diaries to write things down – things they need to do or important things that have been discussed. If my staff came to a meeting and they didn’t have a notepad or diary, I would send them away to get one. We’re not all Einsteins – we can’t all remember everything.
If you write things down, you can action, whether it’s prioritising things or going back later to look at things that were discussed. Even now, outside of business, I still write things down every day because I know if I don’t, they’re not going to get done. And from there I prioritise things (see Part 2: Chapter 4.1).
In a meeting, when I would ask if someone could do something for me, and would get a yes, I would then ask, ‘When by?’, and would be given a date that it would be done by. I had a reputation of having a memory like an elephant. I seldom forget requests to carry out tasks. If the task wasn’t done by the due date, I would say, ‘How’s that thing going I asked for?’ Often, I got those possum eyes of ‘Oh no, I forgot’. The reason was always that it wasn’t written down, a date placed on it or prioritised in the diary.
Whenever I feel I am overloaded, flustered and have too much on, wondering where to start, I go back to my prioritised to-do list. If you don’t