The Gift of Little Scraps of Paper

Get organized, reduce stress, and be more creative.

Mat
4 min readJun 26, 2019
Photo by Alfonso Navarro on Unsplash

I use little scraps of paper to map plans, make decisions, and hammer out my creative ideas.

In turn, these little scraps of paper save me an overwhelming amount of anxiety, give me clear-headed time with my family, and drive my wife nuts.

How it Started

In high school I played bass guitar and tried to write songs. I’d be sitting in class bored out of my mind and a bass line would start playing in my head. So I’d transpose it on a scrap of paper and play it when I got home.

After high school I worked in a factory and would write down song lyrics that came to mind.

In university I worked in a library and would jot down ideas for essays that came to mind as I re-shelved books. I’d also jot down titles and call numbers of books I knew would come in handy later.

Thanks to those scraps of paper I toured in a band, and graduated university with honors.

Family Life

Now I’m married with kids and I’m an entrepreneur (family photography). A couple years ago I hit the peak of anxiety in my life and broke down.

I began to map out a better future — on little scraps of paper — how should life look day to day?

Then I began mapping out my day — on little scraps of paper — so that I wouldn’t have to think it through constantly. Just do what the paper tells me to do.

So much anxiety melted away when I began to live the good vision for my life. And to not overthink things, to just write a list and do it.

I can hang out with my family, generally clear-headed, not panicked about the million things I need to do.

The Perfect Storm

I began setting goals for my photography business (take back my weekends, revamp my website, learn to write, increase income), all on scraps of paper.

I noticed getting really tense on Friday afternoons as I would scramble to finish all my weekly goals so that I could have a couple days off.

The last Friday of the month was even more intense because it was the end of the week and the end of my monthly goals as well.

But the end of a business quarter was the perfect storm. The last day of the last week of the last month of the quarter was a fury of stress and anxiety. I noticed the pattern because I kept track of it on, you guessed it, little scraps of paper!

With my thoughts from the last few months laid out before my eyes, I saw the pattern and fixed it.

Decision Fatigue

With every decision that you have to make over the course of the day your ability to make decisions grows thin. It gets especially hard to make a decision when you’re hungry, rushed or tired. So whenever possible, I make decisions in advance and write them down. Then I don’t have to think or decide later. I make tough decisions when I’m at my strongest and have a lot more decision-making power left-over for those spur of the moment decisions.

If I come across as quick-thinking and spontaneous, it’s simply because I decided in advance and wrote it down.

Pen and Paper is a Grace

At any given moment I’m writing something down on a scrap of paper so that I can deal with it at the right time. I don’t want to be distracted from my kids because of the stress of carrying a to-do list in my mind. It all goes on paper and the stress goes away. If I’m anxious over a situation I immediately grab a napkin or scrap of paper and sketch out a plan. Anxiety, gone. When I come up with a creative idea when I’m supposed to be doing some grunt work, I write it down and come back to it later. I don’t create based on inspiration. I don’t have to have a feeling of awe or be in the moment. If it’s a good idea (and most of my ideas are not good) then it will still be good later.

That’s how those little scraps of paper, a grace from God, help me get organized, reduce stress, and be more creative.

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Mat

Most books can be summed up in a sentence. Instead of writing books, I write sentences.