Remembering Learnings

This is a slightly longer post.

I’m sure you learn a new thing about your online business 2 or 3 times a week (if not more).  When that lesson happens what do you do?  Do you just internalize it or note it down?  If you note it down are you noting it in a format that an intern could easily read or grasp, or are you writing it down for just yourself?

The fact is that 90% of these daily lessons evaporate into nothingness, which is why I strongly recommend noting them down and making note in a language that someone totally inexperienced could read and make sense of.  I use a dead simple free site called https://30boxes.com/.  I’ve been using it since 2010.  The site has a very simple interface, it’s essentially a page with 30 boxes, one for each day of the month.  If you click a box a popup appears where you can type in your daily learning.  The lesson needs to be written in a summarized format (around 7 words).  You can use Bitly.com to add a short link to a Google Doc for lessons that are more detailed, but my advice is to keep things simple.

I make it a point to note one lesson a day.  It’s not always easy to do because some days I feel I didn’t learn anything new, but that’s not true.  I just need to think through my day and a lesson will pop.  If you want to keep your learnings private just mark them as ‘private’.  I personally don’t think this is needed because your calendar is only accessible via your login and password.

Every 30 days I have a calendar reminder to review daily learnings.  I randomly scroll back, select a month, and go over the lessons for that month.  It never takes more than 5 minutes and always ends up reminding me of a few forgotten lessons.  It’s also a great way to have a reality check.  Sometimes I just feel my mind isn’t learning anything new but when I go through daily learnings it immediately dispels that myth.  We ARE learning all the time, we’re just not cataloging it properly.

Another cool benefit is that if I vaguely remember a lesson but want more detail 30boxes.com has a search box where you can enter the name of the idea (for example “reactivation email”) and see every idea with the phrase “reactivation email” in it.