Pick your Inbox then use it!

The UCT — The Ubiquitous Capture Tool. It goes with your everywhere. It is accessible at a moment’s notice. We use it all of the time to capture every thought, every idea, note, task or event. Anytime, anyplace, anywhere. The UCT. That’s the idea.

Photo by Alejandro Escamilla on Unsplash

However, still this is an idea that hasn’t caught on for everyone. And, as apps and app features proliferate, it becomes even harder.

• A colleague of mine used anything and everything he could get his hands on. His notebook, a post it note, an envelope, the back of a letter he received, grabbing my notebook and ripping a scrap of paper out of it ( 😡 ). All of this ended up in a pile, or in a bag or anywhere else.
• Plenty of people I have worked, and myself as well far too often, just expect to remember stuff.
• We have an email inbox, a notes app with an inbox, our task manager, messaging apps etc. Multiple place to note things down.
• Some apps provide a tonne of options to capture things (e.g. ClickUp — notepad, task, reminder, doc OR Notion can have multiple databases each with their own buttons etc to plonk stuff into)

The end result is a mess.

The end result is that either we do not have a system for writing things down and so we forget, or we need our own separate system to help us remember where…