Actually, You Don’t Have Time Not to Document

Photo by Christina Morillo:

“Documentation.”

Does the word scare you? Send you fleeing? Give you the “ick”?

Do you think: “I don’t have time to document; I barely have time to do the work itself”?

(And if you’re thinking, what does she mean by “document”? To me, documentation is just a quick note of what you did and when, and most task apps are going to timestamp your comments automatically, making this process even easier.)

Documentation, like planning, sleep or exercise, is often one of the first things to go when you get busy.

But, this doesn’t serve you in the long run (or even the medium run, actually).

It’s counter-intuitive, but you actually don’t have time NOT to document.

You don’t want to wait until “later” or “the end of the day” or “when I have a few minutes” to document.

You want to document what you’re doing AS YOU ARE WORKING ON IT. 

If you take 10 seconds to note in your task that you left a voicemail for someone on a specific date, then later you don’t need to try to recall that information, or search for when you sent that email. 

Taking a couple extra seconds on the front end, in the moment, you save TONS of time overall.

How?

Well, if you wait even a couple of hours, you have to think about it (whatever it is) TWICE.

And that takes time.

Right now, you know that you sent off that email.

In a couple hours you’ll be wondering “Did I send it? Or is it still a draft?” And you’ll need to go check.

Or worse, you wait until next week and you can’t remember if you even started it, or where it might be.

Documenting in the moment also helps you build the habit of keeping your task system current.

One big hindrance a lot of people experience when they try to start a task system, is that they don’t update in the moment, and then updating the system itself becomes yet another task they need to do.

And if “updating your task list” is an item on your task list, you’re in a losing battle.

Because “update my task list” in never going to feel like a top priority in an of itself.

By documenting in the moment, you save time because the update is already top of mind.

Documenting as you go helps you to avoid relying on your memory so that you can use all that brain power to focus on the task at hand.

Think of it as a gift to you future self.