Hi

This is something I found to be both sacrilegious to GTD and very much a core part of its "capture everything" philosophy.

Over time, I've found that more and more, I need to capture something at any possibly circumstance. Now I usually carry a small pad and pen right in my pocket, but there are times when you don't have access to that, in fact a lot of the time.

Strangely enough, most of my ideas (or points that I need to remember) seem to come to me when I have nothing at hand other than my brain - like when I'm in the shower, or about to go to sleep (too sleepy to get up and write it down), or rushing from class to class.

Now at this point, I find a temporary "mental" inbox very useful. If trained properly, it is MUCH quicker to access than having to write something down, and you can do it ANYWHERE, ANYTIME. This is just a very temporary one, in that you can empty it the first chance you get.

The sacrilegious part is of course the "mental", as a core aspect of GTD is getting it out of your head. However, I don't think this method increases stress as you don't actually just think "okay, noted" and it floats around somewhere in your head (which is bad as it gets lost and causes stress), but is actually a very structured list in the mind that you keep, just as you do on a paper list.

I've been using Harry Lorayne's system of peg words, where you associate 1 to 10 (or actually you can go to 100 with the system) with an image and then associate your item on the list to the image corresponding to the number (eg. if Tie is 1 and you need to buy fish, imagine a fish hanging from your neck instead of a tie). Then just go down the list in your mind to find out what's in it. This works quite well, is quick and makes each item quite memorable because it is an image.

One problem I find with this approach is that the book is written a few decades ago (I think). I find that most modern day things (at least what I work in) are too abstract to visualise. I mean how can I find a decent image for "remember to convert document to PDF" or "sync code to svn"? Sure, if you thought long and hard enough about it, you'd find a relevant image but that just cancels out the speediness and usefulness of the process.

So I'd just like to ask: does anyone know any good recent memory techniques that are quick to use to make a list and can cater to more abstract modern day things?

Thx!