The blog

Do you remem­ber the ear­ly 90’s leg­endary series ​“Twin Peaks”? Each episode con­tained at least one scene in which Kyle MacLachlan’s char­ac­ter ​“Agent Coop­er” grabbed his dic­ta­phone and began by say­ing ​“Diane,…” and then freely record­ed his thoughts onto the tape.

?The sto­ry nev­er revealed who Diane was or if she even existed.??In most mod­ern cell­phones there is a fea­ture called ​“Voice Record­ing”, ​“Voice Notes” or some­thing similar.

This fea­ture is at the moment my dear­est struc­tur­al tool.

Cap­ture the elusive?The dic­ta­phone-func­tion allows me to cap­ture many things as they pass through my mind. Instead of forc­ing them to come to me when I need them, I can cap­ture these grains of gold, just wait­ing to become expres­sions, ideas and argu­ments, when­ev­er they appear, effort­less­ly. It is a huge relief for me to be able to let them off my mind, and still keep them safe in store, in the same form as they first appeared to me.

Good ideas?

It can, for instance, be good, and even seem­ing­ly bril­liant ideas, which I then put into my ​“someday/maybe”-list to mature until the time is right to put them into prac­tice. Some of them ripen as pre­dict­ed, while oth­ers fade away with time.

Things to do

?I often voice record those to-dos I’ve decid­ed to take action on short­ly after I fin­ished a phone call (and which I might have agreed upon doing with the per­son I spoke with). If I’m dri­ving, I’d rather voice record the task than search for my pen and my index card sized Stay-on-track-cards to write it down. It is impor­tant that I make sure to ​“emp­ty” the voice recorder as soon as I turn on the com­put­er and trans­fer the tasks into Out­look, so that I don’t have tasks scat­tered in var­i­ous places.

Clever expres­sions and reasonings 

?But above all, at the moment I am enjoy­ing dic­tat­ing my expres­sions and rea­son­ings aloud to myself. To write let­ters or e‑mails, espe­cial­ly in a par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive sit­u­a­tion in a rela­tion­ship with a cus­tomer, is for me asso­ci­at­ed with a cer­tain amount of agony. As is cre­at­ing new lec­ture mate­r­i­al when I am run­ning short on time. ??I often come up with the most clever expres­sions and for­mu­la­tions when I’m doing some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent than sit­ting at the com­put­er star­ing at a blank sheet on the screen. If I’m then able to cap­ture these clever phras­es as they pop up, the process of writ­ing the let­ter or the lec­ture itself becomes a whole lot easier.??Since the writ­ing is no longer taint­ed with anguish, I will get it done a lot eas­i­er (since I’m not choos­ing to do oth­er, more con­ve­nient things first). The e‑mail will be sent, the process con­tin­ues to evolve and I will reach my goal soon­er rather than later.??And if you think about it — all this thanks to Diane.

Go ahead, try it..

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?If you are not doing it already, I can real­ly rec­om­mend you to try the voice notes fea­ture. If your cell phone lacks this appli­ca­tion there are sim­ple voice recorders you can pur­chase. What is it worth to catch a grain of gold before it eludes you?
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How do you do it?

?What is your favorite struc­tur­al tool right now? 

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