Notes apps are where ideas go to die. And that’s good. · reproof

Any article that quotes Daniel Kahneman and David Allen, amongst others, is going to catch my eye. I’m like many others with notes. I keep them, but I wonder at times why I even bother given how infrequently I find that I need to go back to them. What is the ROI if you retrieve so little?

So we hoard. Try to remember it all with misplaced loss aversion, only to strain under the weight of a million open mental tabs and erode our ability to remember the important things.

We need to forget, but we first must feel safe forgetting.

That’s why notes and bookmark apps are so valuable to us. Their promise of a storehouse for all our fleeting whims looks like the salvation we so desperately need. Absolution from procrastination at the altar of getting things done.

Writing it down so you can let it leave your mind is a big part of the return-on-investment that is easy to forget.