{"id":2174,"date":"2014-04-15T09:48:36","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T14:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/blog\/?p=2174"},"modified":"2014-12-18T14:20:47","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T20:20:47","slug":"tool-use-cope-terrible-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/?p=2174","title":{"rendered":"The tool I use to cope with my terrible memory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My memory is horrible. Yours is too.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quicksprout.com\/2013\/08\/08\/this-is-your-brain-on-visualization\/?display=wide\" target=\"_blank\">recent study<\/a> says that our attention span is shorter than a goldfish.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2176\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2176\" style=\"width: 797px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2176\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/This_is_Your_Brain_on_Visualization.png\" alt=\"Source: Quicksprout.com\" width=\"797\" height=\"396\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/This_is_Your_Brain_on_Visualization.png 797w, https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/This_is_Your_Brain_on_Visualization-300x149.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 797px) 100vw, 797px\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2176\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/This_is_Your_Brain_on_Visualization.png\" alt=\"Source: Quicksprout.com\" width=\"797\" height=\"396\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/This_is_Your_Brain_on_Visualization.png 797w, https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/This_is_Your_Brain_on_Visualization-300x149.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 797px) 100vw, 797px\" \/><\/noscript><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2176\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Quicksprout.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Think about that for a minute, a <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>FISH<\/strong><\/span> has a longer memory than you.<\/p>\n<p>That is a problem<\/p>\n<p>This used to be a massive problem for me. I would forget everything!<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>My wifes birthday<\/li>\n<li>Our anniversary<\/li>\n<li>How much tax to set aside from each pay check<\/li>\n<li>&lt;&lt;insert important task&gt;&gt;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Then I ran across an app called <!--more--><a href=\"https:\/\/smilesoftware.com\/TextExpander\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">TextExpander<\/a>. It allows me to remember everything I need to know and recall it instantly.<\/p>\n<p>This is how it works:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Enter the important information into the app<\/li>\n<li>Assign a shortcode to the item (like: \/anniversary)<\/li>\n<li>Then type the shortcode anytime you need<\/li>\n<li>The information instantly appears on your screen<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h3><strong>Example 1:\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I pay myself every other week. To do that I have to log into my business bank account and create a transfer from that account to my personal account.<\/p>\n<p>However, I also have to remember to go to my personal account and transfer a percentage of that amount back into another account for quarterly tax payments.<\/p>\n<p>My problem is I can never remember how much that is. That causes me to procrastinate and sometimes forget to do it all together.<\/p>\n<p>To make this easy I&#8217;ve set the amount I need to transfer into the shortcode &#8220;\/tax&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Now anytime I type in &#8220;\/tax&#8221; the amount I need to transfer instantly appears.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here it is in action:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2182\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2182\" style=\"width: 1280px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2182 \" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/tax-textexpander.gif\" alt=\"tax-textexpander\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2182 \" src=\"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/tax-textexpander.gif\" alt=\"tax-textexpander\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" \/><\/noscript><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2182\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This is the not actual amount \ud83d\ude42<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h3><b>Example 2:<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>I use <a href=\"https:\/\/leadpages.net\" target=\"_blank\">Leadpages<\/a> to create landing pages for this site and clients. One of the downsides to using Leadpages is I have to manually insert my Google Analytics tracking code into each page or else the traffic to those sites won&#8217;t register.<\/p>\n<p>Each time I create a new page I have to:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Login to Google Analytics<\/li>\n<li>Find the right account<\/li>\n<li>Remember where to find the tracking code<\/li>\n<li>Copy the code<\/li>\n<li>Go back to LeadPages<\/li>\n<li>Paste the code<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Now I&#8217;ve added my Google Analytics code to TextExapnder. Anytime I type in &#8220;\/gacode&#8221; my entire code snippet instantly appears.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2185\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2185\" style=\"width: 1280px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2185\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/ga-code.gif\" alt=\"ga-code\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2185\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/ga-code.gif\" alt=\"ga-code\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" \/><\/noscript><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2185\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Example of using TextExapnder to instantly recall Google Analytics tracking code<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>TextExpander is one of my favorite and most used daily applications.<\/p>\n<p>I use it for everything from writing blog post to daily journaling.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PS:<\/strong> Do you use TextExpander or another program like it? What is your favorite shortcut?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My memory is horrible. Yours is too. A recent study says that our attention span is shorter than a goldfish&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.growthtools.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}