Don’t let things slip through the cracks


Ever forgotten to reply to an important client?

Forgotten to cancel an expensive subscription before it renewed?

Forgotten to buy a birthday present?

I don’t blame you. Our world is so complicated and our minds get yanked in a dozen directions every day.

You can’t expect to remember everything that’s important.

Not on your own, anyway.

But for 2025, let’s set up a system to help you out.

If you have a good capture system for important tasks, deadlines, and just thoughts, you won’t have to remember them yourself.

You can write them down and act on them when you have more bandwidth.

I set up a simple “plus” button on my phone’s lock screen that lets me capture anything I want to remember or act on later:

The plus button opens my to-do app.

So when I think of something to remember, I just pull out my phone, tap the plus button, write the thing down, tap save, and get back to focusing on what’s in front of me.

It’s like how in olden times you might have always carried a small paper notebook and a pen in your jacket pocket. Except today, you already have your phone with you all the time anyway.

(The eagle-eyed, by the way, will see that my phone’s lock screen includes two plus buttons. One for adding calendar events and another for everything else. But I suggest you start with just one catch-all system.)

So, find a good to-do app. Get its plus button on your phone’s lock screen. And then, whenever you think of something to act on later, just grab your phone and write it down.

It takes, like, 20 seconds.

This capture system does need follow-up, of course.

If you only ever write down what you need to do, but you never look at what you’ve written down—well, you’re back to square one.

You need to periodically process your capture “inbox”.

And that’s not all. You also need to learn what’s worth capturing in the first place.

If you write down every single thought you ever have, you’ll quickly overwhelm your ability to process your entries.

So capturing is part one of your complete productivity system.

You also need a way to track deadlines, a routine for planning your days, a system for processing your email… but I digress.

It all starts with making capturing very easy. Near-frictionless.

So go set that up, if you haven’t already.

Oh, and remember to reply to that client, buy that birthday present, and cancel that subscription—before it’s too late.

Peter Akkies

Join 10,000 people who receive free weekly productivity tips ⬇️

Read more from Peter Akkies

What’s always just beyond your grasp? What would you definitely get to—if only you had an extra two hours in your day? What’s been on your goal list for a looooong time without any progress? How can you finally, finally get around to this thing? The answer isn’t trying harder. That doesn’t work. You’ve tried trying harder, haven’t you? I sure have. And I got two years of burnout as a reward. There’s only one way that works. But first: be nice to yourself, for Pete’s sake. Stop telling...

Have you heard this saying before? Apparently it comes from the Navy SEALs: “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” It’s easy to imagine SEALs working this way. They don’t rush their preparation. They don’t cut corners when cleaning their rifle. And they don’t jump out of their helicopter a second before they’re supposed to. It’s harder to remember this for ourselves. We don’t need to imagine we’re special operatives as we go about our days. (Yikes, way too stressful.) But, as much as we might...

In the comments on my latest YouTube video, someone asked: Do you have videos on prioritisation? I have an awesome system I’ve set up in Apple Reminders, but I just can never seem to prioritise the list perfectly and always feel behind. This person is already doing a great job, having all of their to-dos captured to Apple Reminders and organized into lists. But it’s a good question: How do you actually decide what to work on first? Is there a formula? I’ll get back to that in a second. But...