All right, so I want to go return to a segment we introduced a couple weeks ago, the habit tune up segment. The idea here is that I just take a piece of advice from the large toolbox of tips and tricks and rules I've written about or talked about over the years and just focus on it a little bit.

And so in particular, today, I want to talk about what I think is the most important piece of productivity software that's out there. And I'll give you a hint, you all already have it on all of your devices. That's the good news. And that is my strategy of using a working memory dot txt, plain text file.

So I have a couple different names for this. A working memory dot txt is one name for this. The other is what I call text file or plain text file productivity. Over the years, I've used both of those terms. But the basic idea is quite simple. You have on the computers you use a blank text file, and you keep it open.

And it's always open on your desktop. I call mine working memory dot txt. I'm just using the text editor on my Mac. I don't even have rich formatting turned on. It's plain text. There's no bolding, there's no font size, it's just plain text, and you just have it open.

And it is literally a way to offload things out of your brain, where you can still see them, look at them, organize and make sense of them, without having to keep all these things in your mind at the same time. And what this is recognizing, the reality this is recognizing is that we have very limited working memory.

So we can only keep so much in our head at a time. And as I talk about all the time on this show, there's a real cost of cognitive context switching. So if you're trying to keep track of multiple different things at the same time, it's very difficult to sort of go back and forth between them, to see how they trade off, to see how you're going to make these things work, because your mind is trying to switch back and forth between all these contexts.

If you offload things to a text file, you can just see them. It is a huge cybernetic boost to your organizational capacity. So now you can have lots of things written down, you can see them without having to hold them in your head, you can focus on one thing at a time at your head.

You can also juggle a bunch of things and see their connections, because when you're looking down them all written down and not trying to hold them all in your head, you're not paying nearly as big as a context shifting cost. It's a huge secret to my success. So there's a couple ways you might use this.

One would be you're trying to solve a complicated problem. You know, okay, how are we going to get we have this visitor coming? How are we going to get the travel logistics? What do we need to do? Man, this seems so complicated. Like how are they? Are they going to come?

Are they going to need a hotel? How are they going to stay? So like you have a problem that's complicated, it has a lot of moving parts. You're not going to solve this in your head, you start typing everything out. Like what are all the different things that need to happen?

You refine it and you combine it. You can start doing visual lexicographic thinking. Like, well, let me grab these three lines, copy and paste and put them down here and label them with, all right, this I can all offload to, you know, Jesse to do this I don't know about this, I'm going to move to Thursday, you can start labeling these things and categorizing them.

So there's a very complex organization and thinking here that you would not be able to do very well just in your head. The text file helps. Another scenario where the plain text file is going to really help you is let's say as you're trying to get through your email, trying to clear out all this email that's built up, I have 50 messages and they're all different.

They're dealing with different issues, all different cognitive contexts. Trying to deal with each of those one by one as so many of us have learned can be devastating because you're switching context again and again, email to email and you burn out like I can't do this anymore and you start hunting for easy to reply to messages because your brain is tired.

The alternative is using your plain text files, you start actually like capturing what's in these emails, what their request is, what you need to do in your text file. Just give each of them a different line. Now you have 20 or 30 different lines on here. You haven't had to solve any of these issues that you've just summarized all the emails with one or two lines on this big text file.

Now you can start grouping, now you can start organizing, now you can start pulling everything related to one project, copy and pasting and put them next to each other and everything related to this project over here and things you have no idea how to answer over here. You're making sense of the information without having to dive into it, without having to try to keep track of all this stuff in your head.

And then you go through and you answer all these emails at once, then switch through and put a calendar notice for answering these somewhere else. It is really like a organizational superpower once you get really good at using this plain text file to extend and organize what's on your plate.

It's like taking your brain and making it a much better brain. And it's something I swear by, I keep the file open all the time. Stuff is just on there. If I just have a random thought, I'll just write it on there. And you know, by the end of the day, I try to look at that.

Is there anything on here that needs to go back into a system? Was there a thought I dropped that I haven't handled? And I'll I'll look through and kind of process that working memory that TXT at the end of the day to see what's left on there. But it's always there.

And it's storing all sorts of information and being used for all sorts of different purposes. And I cannot overemphasize once you get good at this simple but powerful productivity hack, how much extra capability that it gives you. How much extra capability gives you so stop trying to do all this stuff in your head.

Use a simple text file. Can I ask a couple of follow up questions? Yeah. When did you start this? It's a good question. So there if you search, I wrote about it on my blog. Back in my MIT days. Look for if you want to do a Google search, I don't know if you have that up there.

Work like me is plain text productivity, working memory dot txt. I don't know, but it would have been the original post on this would have been 2008. If I had to guess 2007 maybe a little bit later. Plain text productivity is what I used to call this I think or freestyle productivity.

Yeah, I also used to call it freestyle productivity. So like forget, I don't care how you structure this or format this just like get stuff on the file and start rock and rolling with there's a plain text dash productivity dot net URL. I take full credit. I say before you go to the website and realize it's actually about like kidnapping children or something.

So you're doing this in college or was it after college? After college, but definitely or pretty early in grad school. And then do you remember how you discovered it? That's a good question. 2009 freestyle productivity. 2009 there we go. Probably because there's a whole culture of this in computer science and developers.

So developers, so people who write computer code. So I was exposed to this obviously as a computer science graduate student at MIT. They are really big on using these text editors like Vim or Emacs because that's where they would write their code and they customize it and they got really big on using these for all parts of their life.

And probably I came across the original. So I'm really just a deep hole. I think Danny, I'm gonna get this name wrong. Danny Lewin maybe gave this famous talk where he introduced the idea of life hackers. It's like life hacking as a notion was introduced by a gentleman named Danny something and I'm going to look this up because I've got the actual name.

But anyways, it was this famous talk he gave about life hacking and how computer developer types life hack. And on I believe Boing Boing, Cory Doctrow, if I'm remembering this right, posted his notes from this talk and it was a pretty, oh, Danny O'Brien, not Danny Lewin, Danny O'Brien.

2005. So look, I'm looking it up in real time. Blah blah blah. The term life hack was coined in 2004 during the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. It's coined by technology journalist, journalist Danny O'Brien to describe the embarrassing scripts and shortcuts productive IT professionals use to get their work done.

And then Merlin Mann ran with that notion. Okay, so Danny O'Brien was talking about how IT professionals use these macros and shortcuts in a text editor. How they would run their whole lives out of these text editors. So real early in this notion of digitally enhanced productivity was this idea of life hacking, which became to encompass everything.

But when it was first introduced, it was what IT nerds would do to track their life and they would keep track of everything in their life in these text files. And so I'm sure that's where I was exposed to it through Merlin Mann and 43 Folders in that 2007, 2008 period.

So I bet that's how I was exposed to it. But that's it. It's a whole interesting history, by the way, the whole life hack history. What about when you're walking around? Do you have like a file on your phone? I don't. I don't. So it depends on how long the walk is.

So I'll typically have my bag with me. I'll have a notebook in it and I can capture thoughts. But yeah, if you're on foot and this is like a productive meditation, right, is working through ideas just in your head. You're much worse at it than if you're sitting at a computer with the plain text file.

But it's a really good exercise because A, it expands your ability to concentrate and focus just that discipline of keeping track of things in your head. And B, the walking can unlock things. It can unlock creative connections that you don't get sitting down. So you almost have two options here.

And I'm focusing now on trying to have big ideas or like original ideas. You can sit at a screen and expand your working memory with a plain text file and try to move ideas around and figure things out. Or you can go for a walk. You don't have as big of a working memory to work with, but you get the ambulation bonus, this idea that walking can unlock other types of connections.

So it's sort of like two different types of cognition. But certainly I am kind of committed or I don't know how to plan anymore, especially planning email, trying to figure out, OK, I have to book my travel for something. Those type of seemingly mundane tasks actually have with them seven or eight different things that have to happen that connect and dates that matter.

I don't know how to do that anymore if I can't have a text file to start moving all this information. Right. Part of it, too, is like my next question is when you're writing, do you like and you're working on whatever you're working on, do you and something comes up that's not related?

Do you write on that a lot? Yeah. Yeah. Does that happen a lot? Yeah. Look, I have my computer open. So let me load this up. All right. So on mine now, it's called WM2.txt. WM2.txt was my working memory text file. It turns out when you keep a text file open on your computer for years, like weird stuff happens at some point.

I don't know. I just couldn't access that file anymore. So I moved on to WM2. And I'm looking at it now. The first item is a GU mailbox colon to grade request. So there's like two students who are asking for their current grades. And I came across that and I know I need to do that.

And so I'm just noting it there to there's another. And it's literally just a hyphen, plain text hyphen. The next thing says schedule new haircut. So I was supposed to get my haircut yesterday. My stylist got COVID. They're like, I have to reschedule. And I was like, I can't do this right now.

So I just wrote down schedule new haircut. And now that's going to sit there and I'll see it. I'm not going to forget. And then I have 330 office hours Zoom because there was, as I mentioned, I was like, oh, at the last second as I was coming over here, a student asked if they could ask me some questions about an exam on Zoom.

And I told them we could use the office hours, Zoom room, et cetera. Boom, it's just on here. And I see this every time I open it. So this is just stuff on my mind is no longer on my mind. And the other thing I'll do is I'll put equal signs, a bunch of equal signs to make divider horizontal divider lines.

So if I want to just have a space for just messing around with things, I put a bunch of equal signs and like below it, I'm just messing around with notes. And typically at the top of my text file is like things I don't want to forget tasks to deal with or process.

And then if I want to think about another thing, I might put another bunch of horizontal equal signs and so kind of create these little spaces where I can just mess around with. I guess it's one last clarification question. So like when you're walking around, like doing an errand or something and you don't have like your phone or you don't happen to have a notebook, what do you, I guess you always have like a piece of paper.

So you just write it on that. Yeah. And if I don't, I just, you know, holding it. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. And then you write it down at the end of the day, you look at that notebook and then you look at your file. Yeah. So if I'm just thinking about something when I'm walking and I just have it in my head, I'm going to write it down as soon as I get back.

Got it. Yeah. And that's another great thing. It's an incredibly low friction to just drop it into a text file. Just whatever, however you want to summarize. That's why I used to say freestyle productivity. I don't care how you do it. Just get it in there. You know what you mean.

Whatever formatting you want to do, just get it in there and then it's out of your head. Yeah. So anyways, that is the most important piece of productivity software that you already own, but you're not using is your text editor. And maybe in the future we'll have like an augmented reality thing or wherever you are, it's like, boom, you pull up this thing.

I can just like drop thoughts into it and then boom, like make it go away. It's like always kind of there with you with some sort of like AI agent that like help you like a Siri type thing. I can see how this goes. I mean, we could try, this would be difficult, but we could try to have a high price software project product.

It's actually just a text file. In the meantime, I think we had like really good marketing for it. And it was, there was like a really compelling YouTube video where people are getting on private jets and this and that. And it's just like a really slick sound effect when it turns on.

And in the end people don't realize that it's just the text, the text editor for only $49.95 a month. You too can unlock your productivity brilliance with WM2, the most important piece of productivity software, which is true, ever invented. And all it is is like a little script that just opens a notebook.