Write it DOWN!

Today while pilfering through the brilliance that is my twitter feed I noticed a video posted by Tom Price (@pricetom, PC Andy Torchwood).  The video was a commencement speech by my personal writing god Aaron Sorkin to the 2012 class of his Alma Mater (you can watch his magnificent brilliance here: https://ensemble.syr.edu/app/sites/index.aspx?destinationID=izHGVJ2he0iJAF4dHctW-Q&contentID=qp_sG09FV0-H77OwyXCDwQ ) Besides the usual feeling of personal hackiness that comes with observing any form of Aaron's writing it also (as per usual) inspired an idea of my own (that's writer's code for I stole this): If I were to address the graduating class of my own Alma Mater Oglethorpe University what advice would I bestow upon them? I thought back to my favorite sum-the-meaning-of-life-into-15-minutes-including-a-few-touching-and-witty-personal-anecdotes-speech moments, including another commencement address by JK Rowling, the "Wear Sunscreen" thing and The Last Lecture (go ahead and google, I'll wait for ya) my fantastically useful and magical words of wisdom are these-write it down.  Why is it that the so called secrets of the world's successful people are always so simple and common sense (i.e. anything from Poor Richards Almanac) yet so incredibly elusive? Oh, that's right we didn't WRITE IT DOWN! During my tenure among the hallowed halls of OU I learned many things about myself including the fact that writing things down committed them to memory.  At the time I used this "trick" to avoid studying, at which I was fairly dreadful.  The slight flaw with this brilliant plan is that it required one to actually go to class, to hear the things worthy of inspiration (read:stealing) spoken by my fantastic professors.  Here it is a little more than 9 years to the day from my own commencement and I finally figured this amazing idea that I already knew out.  Some learning curve, eh?

I had a job interview today and I didn't write some of the important information down.  Due to some mitigating circumstances I didn't sleep at all last night so my memory wasn't quite as clear as it usually is and the missing information caused an argument amongst my family members (that is a whole other blog post, trust me) which set in motion a group of events which might or might not have cost me the job, won't know until later in the week.  After the interview I was asked several questions by my family and the ones where I had written down the answers somewhere caused relief to my already stressed to the max clan whereas the ones which I couldn't produce physical proof of led to more arguing. 

So in closing write it down, take note, keep important information handy-whatever expression you prefer-do that and do it often and you will be guaranteed success or at least fewer stressful moments which can only lead to good things.  Never take for granted that someone else will have the information for you.  Tomorrow we'll tackle the whole issue of finding that information we have written down.