Be your own light in the darkness

_Cover image by [Nadine Shaabana](https://unsplash.com/@nadineshaabana?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/)_

I'm most likely not the first person to do this kind of practice, but I would like to share it in case it might help anyone else.

I'm well aware of my incredible ability to forget things. It has always been like this since I was a kid. So in order to counter attack my weakness, I've come up with different practices like using To-Do lists, taking notes, writing things in paper, using a bunch of different calendar apps and yet I had to find something else that would help me to get back into old projects that are just sitting there in my GitHub profile collecting dust.

So here's where I introduce you to...

Writing.

Amazing, who would have thought, right?

Well... more specifically, writing to yourself in your tasks descriptions.

I've had a really nice relationship with apps like Trello, which are really easy to get into and get things going with a few minutes of trying them out.

So for me, I've used the good old To-Do, In Progress, On Hold, Done statuses for each task related to my projects.

But there's one thing that I came across and it's that none of those cards had any actual detail description of their progress. Sure, you can tell when it changed from one state to the other, but what happened there? I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, so how the hell am I going to remember that.

Here's the trick: every time you are going to take a break, whether it is for a day or just for lunch, go ahead an write a comment on that card with your new findings, concerns, possible solutions or crazy ideas why something is not done yet.

And most importantly, write it down like a normal conversation to yourself, you don't need to be super formal and go all Grammarly mode.

You could even go deeper into it and take it as a self loving practice, if you will.

"Oh! your past-self is there to help you, to protect you from getting lost in the sea of ideas and symbols that we so cleverly wrote without ever questioning how the heck it will affect us in the future"

Yeah, we've all done it, and we still do. But hopefully this tip will make things just a bit better this time around :)