If you’re reading this, were pretty sure you’re suffering from scattered information.
You take meeting notes in your tablet. You write down thoughts that come to your mind in your phone. Some other times you’re attending a call and write some tasks on a blank sheet, a notebook, or your task manager app on your desktop.
Your end is always the same: scattered information all over the place, not knowing where to find it later on.
The consequences: you feel bad sensations like uncertainty, anxiety, stress, or frustration.
We know not finding quickly your information drive you nuts!
SSOT (Single Source Of Truth)
To solve this problem, you can implement the ICOR® Framework, to be more precise, ICOR®’s 2 first stages: INPUT and CONTROL.
But, before diving in ICOR®’s 2 first stages, you need to understand a simple concept. It’s called Single Source Of Truth (SSOT).
A Single Source Of Truth is the destination of your information, a place you know you left the information so that you can easily go back to recover it.
A friend of us told us he learned something when he was a kid. If he always stored the same object at the same place, he never lost it. He just went to that place and his object was there, always waiting for him!
So, take information as an object and do the exact same approach.
What People Usually Do
But, what do people usually do when talking about a Single Source Of Truth?
They try to have just one Single Source of Truth for everything.
That’s where chaos begins.
Why? Because you need to understand each app has been thought with a clear and defined purpose.
Yes, when developers code an app, they usually try to solve a very concrete and specific problem.
If you’re obsessed with an app that fits it all, you’re taking the wrong way because you’re looking for something that’s pretty difficult. In fact, impossible.
Going that way, you’ll end up, as we said before, anxious, stressed, and frustrated.
A Different Approach
So, let’s make a different approach!
Think it this way:
What’s the problem of having to look at different places if you know where you should look at each moment, depending on your needs?
Why is it when you’re watching TV:
- You look for a sport channel to watch sports?
- You search a documentary channel to watch documentaries?
- You select Disney Channel when looking for cartoons for your kids?
Why don’t you suffer any friction at all with that process?
Because it’s intuitive!
Then, it makes sense to apply the same approach to your Single Source of Truth: - You store all your reminders in a reminders app.
- You store all your events in a calendar app.
- You store all your tasks in a task management app.
- … and so forth.
The Process to Follow
To make things easier, when you capture each piece of information, ask yourself these questions:
- What type of information is this?
- What does my intuition tell me I should look for this information whenever I want to recall it?
Save this rule in your mind: think of your future self.
Try to think as he’ll think when he’ll try to recover a stored information.
Be sure of this: The kinder you are to your future self, the better your life will be.
You can extrapolate this not just to apps but even further.
For example, think about how you name a file. Think about how intuitive your file’s name is. Dedicating 10 seconds to name a file correctly can save you hours whenever you try to recover it.
Now that you’ve faced the concept of Single Source of Truth correctly, let’s move on to ICOR®’s first 2 stages: INPUT and CONTROL.
As you’ll see, now everything is pretty straightforward.
INPUT
ICOR®’S first stage is INPUT.
INPUT’s main goal is moving information from the outer world to your world.
At this stage, focus on what we’ve just said.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What type of information is this and where should I store it to retrieve it just using my intuition?
- How do I take care of my future self?
Just forcing yourself to reply to those questions will make you pause, think, and act. Be sure pretty soon it’ll become a habit you’ll execute on autopilot.
Autopilot means efficiency. Autopilot means high performance. Autopilot is what you are looking for!
Now, let’s move to CONTROL.
CONTROL
CONTROL is ICOR®’S second stage.
Sometimes you’re in a rush, or your Single Source Of Truth is not quite clear because life’s full of grey’s, and sometimes something is not just black or white.
In that case, store the information in a well-defined inbox.
The goal of ICOR®’s CONTROL stage is to decide what you do with the information you’ve captured.
CONTROL gives you exactly that: CONTROL over your information.
It gives you the pause you need to think what to do with a captured information:
- Maybe that information produces several actions.
- Maybe that information is a combination of actions and thoughts.
- Maybe that information is something you need to dedicate more time to read it, understand it, reframe it.
Who knows!
The point is, after the CONTROL stage, you will perfectly know what to do with your information and what Single Source Of Truth is needed.Takeaways
So, start taking action on your scattered information:
- Take your time to decide and define your Singles Sources Of Truth, plural!
- Think of your future self when storing the captured information.
- Use your intuition when you store the information. It’s the crucial skill you’ll use when retrieving it!
- Take a pause if your Single Source Of Truth is not clear.
- Create well-defined inboxes to process them later on.
Following these recommendations, you information won’t be scattered.
It will be where it has to be because every piece of information has ended up in its intuitive Single Source Of Truth.
By doing that, the retrieval process is a piece of cake.
