Okay, so I gotta talk about this Hollis Casey thing. It wasn’t like, a big project or anything super technical. It’s just something that stuck in my head from a while back.
I first bumped into the name Hollis Casey, I think it was buried deep in some old forum thread I was reading late one night. Wasn’t even looking for it. Just popped up. The thread was about weird ways people organize their daily tasks, you know, beyond the usual to-do lists.
Someone mentioned this ‘Hollis Casey Method’. Sounded kinda fancy, but the description was dead simple. Almost too simple. It was basically about picking just one major thing for the day and writing it down on a bright piece of paper, like neon green or hot pink. Then you stick that paper somewhere totally unavoidable. Like, right on your monitor screen, or taped to the fridge handle, or even on the bathroom mirror.
Trying It Out
I figured, why not? Sounded kinda dumb, but maybe there was something to it. My desk was already a mess of sticky notes, maybe one giant, obnoxious one would work better.
So, the next Monday, I gave it a shot.
- Grabbed a bright orange index card. Really bright. Hurt my eyes a bit.
- Thought hard about the single most important thing I needed to finish. Decided it was drafting that annoying report everyone was waiting for.
- Wrote “FINISH DRAFT REPORT” in big block letters with a thick marker.
- Taped it right across the top third of my main monitor. Couldn’t miss it.
Honestly? It felt weird. Having that bright orange thing staring back at me all morning. Every time I glanced up, boom, there it was. “FINISH DRAFT REPORT”. It was kinda irritating, actually. Made me feel pressured, but also… focused? Hard to explain.
I found myself getting sidetracked less. Usually, I’d check emails, browse a bit, grab coffee again. But that stupid orange card kept pulling my attention back. It was like a silent, brightly coloured nag.
Did It Work?
Yeah, kinda. I actually hammered out that draft report way faster than usual. Got it done by lunchtime, which was pretty good for me, especially for that report. The sheer annoyance of the bright card seemed to work as a weird motivator.
I tried it a few more times that week. Some days it worked great. Other days, the “one big thing” wasn’t so clear-cut, and picking just one felt wrong, or the task was too big for one neon card to conquer.
So, the Hollis Casey method, or whatever it was from that forum? It wasn’t magic. Didn’t revolutionize my life. But it was a strange little experiment. Sometimes just doing something different, even something slightly annoying like taping bright paper to your screen, can actually nudge you in the right direction. It’s just funny how these simple, almost silly things sometimes stick with you more than the complicated strategies.
