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How Turning My To-Dos into a Story Boosted My Memory and Solved My Procrastination Problem
March 29th, 2012Top StoryHow Turning My To-Dos into a Story Boosted My Memory and Solved My Procrastination ProblemBy Thorin Klosowski
Two months ago I started writing my calendar for the next day—including to-do lists, scheduling, and everything else—in the form of a story. My story for the day is no work of Pulitzer Prize winning fiction, nor is it filled with Michael Bay-style highs and lows, but it has helped me better map out my day, schedule it, try new things, and the most curious part—actually remember everything on my lists, no tech tricks required. The idea is to grab the hardest details of your day (the lists, tasks, schedules) and make sense of them in the same way your brain makes sense of the world: through a short, simple story. I came across this idea after listening to an interview on the science podcast Radiolab, where neuroscientist Paul Broks mentions a theory that we define ourselves by a story and that story is defined by language. The theory suggests that your entire personhood is a story you tell yourself. His comment was in reference to the present and past, but after hearing this I decided to see what would happen if I applied this same logic to the future. I have a few theories on why this worked that we'll get to in the final section, but let's start by taking a look at the step-by-step process for how you can use storytelling as a means to better structure your day. The Step-by-Step Process
Step 1: Pull Out Your Calendar and Your To-Do ListFirst, pull out your calendar, schedule, and to-do list and take at look at the next day. Don't worry, eventually you can skip this step, but for now it's necessary to get an idea of what needs to get done. Step 2: Map Out Your Day Including Times and Tasks You Need to AccomplishNext, mash your to-do's, goals, and calendar together into one linear list. Estimate your to-do and goal location wherever you think they'll fit. When you write this out as a story you'll see if they'll actually work. For instance, here's a (slightly abbreviated) sample of one of my days:
Obviously your day is different and every one of mine has variations. When you're first plotting this out it's easiest to get a quick look at your schedule in a simple list format. After about a week, you only need to keep a running list of dates and times. Step 3: Write Down Your Day as a Linear Story in the Third Person
Here's a section of one of mine:
You don't really have to worry about grammar or spelling when you're doing this. It isn't meant for anyone but you and doesn't really need to reflect some innate storytelling talent. The only rule is that you keep it in the present tense. You can embellish with all the metaphors and adjectives you like if you want to spice it up. In my case, I try to throw in one extroverted thing each day as a reminder to myself to do something out of the ordinary. I picked this up when reading Dr. Timothy Wilson's Redirect as a way to influence change by simply stating it as a fact. It's on my to-dos, it's in my story, and therefore it has to happen. For what it's worth, I did make a comment to someone about the bad selection of meat at the store, but it wasn't a woman in spandex. When you're doing this step you can gloss over any details or sections of your day you want. I don't put in the fact I have to take a shower, for instance, because it's not something I forget to do. Instead, concentrate on the action moments of your day and let the other bits work themselves out on their own. Photo by lauren. Step 4: Revise
For instance, last week I was shooting video in the morning, had a lunch planned in the afternoon, and a movie in the early evening. As a list, this made perfect sense, but when I started writing it out I realized that it wasn't actually doable because all of those things would take longer than I expected them to. When I visualized my to-do list as a story I found the problems that would likely arise and modified my schedule from that. Photo by Jennie. Be Prepared for a Few OdditiesDoing an experiment like this isn't without its faults. The bulk of my experience over the last two months has been positive, but a few oddities crept up. First off, it took me a little while to get used to the idea of letting things flow out of the schedule. A fluid schedule is something I've always kept so I could adapt to new things, but the story-schedule felt more concrete. Subsequently, I'd feel weird when I wasn't meeting scheduled times or things weren't working out exactly like I'd expected them too. In some ways this is a good thing because I was keeping a strict schedule, but I also needed to learn to allow for more movement. My solution was to remove the sections of the story that specifically dealt with "down time" or rather, the times that were more ambiguously used than others. For example, instead of describing what I do during lunch, I just write, "eats leftovers for lunch." I also ran into a few cases of deja vu that were a bit unsettling. It didn't actually throw anything off balance, but it did cause my brain to take a second to recalibrate to the present tense. In a way this is helpful because you've already worked out a few ways to get through a situation, but it is a bit jarring. Some Thoughts on Why Turning Your To-Do's into a Story WorksFor me, the end result is a drastic improvement from where I was before. I am able to better schedule my day because I visualize it clearly instead of looking at a set of due-dates and mentally trying to figure out how much time it takes me to do something. I anticipate challenges because I force myself through a rehearsal of my day and don't just check items off a to-do list. The biggest benefit came after about two weeks when I wandered into the grocery store and grabbed every item on my list without ever pulling the list out. Without noticing it, I went from having to track everything on a calendar, schedule out different times for tasks, and keep several to-do lists, to going through my day naturally without ever worrying about times, items, or tasks. How and why was this working? Here are a few ideas based on how we understand language and memory. You Inadvertently Create a Memory Palace and Tie Your To-Do's to Your Spatial Memory
In my case, I was inadvertently tying my to-do list with a specific location and mapping out the process of how I got there. For things like shopping lists, I was doing the same thing. I mentally walk through the entire daily experience twice (once while writing and again while editing) before I do it for real. Each step on my schedule gets tied to a place and action and it sticks better in my memory because of it. Working out a to-do list or schedule through a story means you have to use your spatial memory to make the story make sense. You can't walk out of the grocery store and into the bathroom like my to-list is structured. The steps in-between are just as important. Photo by Kevin. Your Brain Responds to Fiction the Same Way it Does to Experiencing Real EventsNew research suggests that the brain doesn't make a big distinction between reading about something and experiencing it. In an article in the New York Times it's suggested that stories have a large impact on how we understand the world. One theory even suggests that reading changes the way we comprehend the world:
In the case of your own story, it means that when you write it down and read it back, your brain runs through a simulation as if it's happening. In turn, when you actually perform those actions the next day you are prepared for them as they come up. It's Kind of Like Mental Time Travel
The difference between a traditional to-do list and this story method is that you have to think about the how in combination with the why and when. You predict and adjust your day, in detail, as it's going to happen before it happens. By the logic above, this means you change your perception of the present from "How am I going to get all this done?" to "This is how I'm getting this done." Photo by David Blackwell. It's worth noting that this isn't a replacement to your long term calendars. It can't help you remember Mother's Day or your second-cousin's bar mitzvah, but it does help shape and make sense of your tomorrow. Of course, it's important to live in the present tense and take the time to pay close attention to what's happening around you. However, those insignificant moments—the scheduling, the grocery lists, the to-dos—can be offloaded into a story where they'll sit in your memory longer and influence you in ways you might not notice. For myself, I'm going to continue using this method to see where it takes me. Next, I'll see what happens when I write out a whole week. How about you, willing to give it a shot? Title image remixed from Warren Goldswain (Shutterstock). |
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The Two Best Things I've Been Told About Assassin's Creed III
March 29th, 2012Top StoryThe Two Best Things I've Been Told About Assassin's Creed IIIBy Stephen Totilo
There's a 51st detail I've been waiting to tell you about (and a 52nd). As a longtime player of the series and, yes, a fan, I considered it the most promising thing that creative director Alex Hutchinson told me about the new game. But if you're not a series veteran it might be lost on you. "The rule is no identical loops," Hutchinson said about the new game. Great news, right? Or do do you need me to explain that? Fair enough! Throughout the presentation of this new AC, Hutchinson and producer Francois Pelland talked about the fatigue series players may feel when they see the same animations or do the same things. There have been four core Assassin's Creed games in nearly as many years and they know people itch for a change. It's easy for them to make it seem like they're delivering a ton of change. Their AC is in a new century (18th), on a new continent (North America) and stars a new assassin (Connor). They're even promising they're scrapping most of the animations from the older games—not the eagle dive, that's staying. The truth is, however, that all that might as well be a new coat of paint. This, thankfully, is something the creators know. And they know what's actually more important to change: the gameplay loops. "The features are dangerous to repeat," Hutchinson said. "But, actually, why you do a feature and what you get for doing it are even more dangerous. That's where the secret fatigue is: 'I did this to get that to unlock this other thing.' When those are identical, you start to be like,: '[groans]' There's no magic in it anymore." No tired, old gameplay loops! I asked about climbing to the tops of tall buildings to survey a city and fill in the map. That's a classic AC loop of action and reward that was made more complex with the need to fight to seize the survey points atop Borgia Towers in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Sure, that's a more interesting way to evolve a loop, Hutchinson and Pelland said, but they want us to be surprised. (They wouldn't nail down exactly how they're handling the climbing-to-survey thing, to be clear.) If they're not repeating old loops, one has to assume we won't have our hero buying art or books to improve a town, that he won't be pulling wanted posters (ditched in AC: Revelations) or bribing town criers to get out of trouble. Hutchinson and Pelland weren't being that specific, but if they're true to their rule, that's what they're promising and that is what will make AC III feel fresh to those of us who have played all the games. I should also tell you about the second-best thing I heard about Assassin's Creed III. Back when the first Assassin's Creed came out, the game was clearly about stealth: Run the roofs, sneak up on the guards. Pounce in broad daylight. Disappear. AC II was like that. Brotherhood, too. Last year's Assassin's Creed Revelations, however, debuted with an E3 presentation that highlighted the hero's ability to toss bombs and use one boat's flamethrower to burn a harbor full of other boats. Not stealth. The final game allowed for more stealthy maneuvers than that, but it wasn't how the game was pitched to the public. I asked Hutchinson and Pelland where AC III will stand in the spectrum of AC games. Were we moving toward action-movie material like Revelations again? "We're much more ACII than the games that followed," Hutchinson said. "We don't like things that are historically inaccurate. We don't like things that are too fantasy. We don't like things that are too over the top. I feel like one of the driving forces in AC is this earnestness and this rich history behind it. Every time you go closer to other games, you lose some magic. So, for sure we're not going there." "Maybe a little bit of the feeling you got in ACR is that you're less of an assassin or had less of a feeling that your core job was to assassinate and be stealthy," Pelland said. This new one is made to make you feel like an assassin. "With Connor and with AC III, this is very, very clear." (Note: The images in this story are Assassin's Creed III screenshots, tweaked by Kotaku. Usually, they're in color.) |
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