Turn Your Colleagues Into Notecards

When the pandemic upended all my normal professional routines, I began experimenting with lots of different work-related organization and scheduling systems. I’ve incorporated task-based scheduling and John Zeratsky’s inbox approach into my week, but nothing’s been more valuable than an analog system that would’ve worked just as well 50 years ago. Or 100.

I’m convinced the key to healthy workplace relationships is notecards.

But not for to-do lists or calendars, which I’ve kept digital, accessible, and shareable. The notecards are for people.

For any given week, I have a set of around 15 notecards on my desk, each with the name of a single person at the top. I have one for my boss, one more for each of my Forge colleagues, ones for certain writers I frequently work with — all the important people in my professional sphere.

On the notecard are short lines of text: projects I want to begin or follow up on, questions I want to ask, anything I want to talk about during the next conversation. Might be a work thing, but it might be a movie I watched on their recommendation. As a thought occurs to me during the day, I get it on a notecard.

The notecards are useful during 1:1 meetings or for random check-in Slacks or emails. But they’re also a snapshot of everything that matters to me right now, through the prism of what matters most to any career: other people.