Last week Rand Europe published research showing that poor sleep affects the UK economy by £40bn per year.  It’s certainly not the first study and won’t be the last.  The Great British Sleep Survey looked at the quality of sleep and the underlying issues.  82% of respondents identified “what happened today” and “what I’ve got on tomorrow” as the key thought affecting sleep.

“Life is a nightmare that prevents one from sleeping.” – Oscar Wilde

One of the best ways to reduce the racing mind is to “Capture” our inputs during the day.   But that’s not always easy with so much ‘stuff’ coming at us thick and fast.

You’re arriving at the office and someone catches you down the hallway with an important update.  As you get to the desk the phone’s ringing – it’s a client complaint.   As you put the phone down, your boss pops by and drops some new initiative on your desk.  While they’re talking you switch on your monitor and notice 80 unread emails just landed in your inbox.  All before 9:00am – and you see your day is back-to-back meetings.

No wonder we can’t sleep.  If we don’t capture each input effectively as it hits us, this thing rattles around our head at night (check the Zeigarnik Effect).  Here are some capture tips to help:

* Choose capture tools that work for you (high or low tech)
* Don’t use your head as capture tool
* Get into the habit of capturing the first time this thing appears
* Trust the capture tools by getting them back to empty regularly
* Have as many capture tools as you need, but as few as possible

Know when not to capture (“send me an email about that!”)

Our email inbox can be a good capture tool, but most don’t get it back to empty.  And of course, good capturing is only 1 part of the 5 stage workflow model.  That’s where Positive People training and coaching work comes in.  David helps people set up and embed software and hardware tools effectively to provide a full system, get their email back to empty and feel on top of their work.

Its a quick win and there are lots of great low and high tech tools for capturing – here’s one to try!