Alright, let me tell you about this thing I’ve been doing, this whole “firulai” journey. It’s not some fancy tech, not at all. It’s more like how I finally managed to stop my brain from exploding with all the bits and pieces I was trying to keep track of. You know how it is, ideas pop up, tasks you gotta do, random thoughts you think are brilliant at 2 AM.
For ages, I was a wreck. Seriously. I had notes on my phone, sticky notes on my monitor that would just fall off, random text files on my desktop named stuff like ‘*’, and don’t even get me started on the notebooks. I bought so many fancy planners and tried all those productivity apps. Spent more time setting them up than actually using them. What a waste of time, honestly.
The Breaking Point
I remember this one week, I completely forgot about a super important deadline. Not just missed it by a bit, but like, it flew by and I was just clueless. That’s when I thought, “Okay, this ain’t working.” I was so frustrated. All those systems, they just added another layer of stuff I had to manage. It was like needing a system to manage your systems. Crazy, right?
So, I kinda gave up on being organized in the “proper” way. One evening, just totally fed up, I opened a plain old text document. Didn’t even give it a proper name at first. I just started typing. Every single thing that was in my head. No order, no fancy formatting. Just a brain dump. It felt… good. Like finally cleaning out a super cluttered drawer, even if you just throw it all into a bigger box for now.
Discovering “Firulai”
I started calling this process “firulai.” Don’t ask me why, the word just popped into my head. Maybe it sounded like “finally figuring it out, loosely” or something. It stuck. My “firulai” file became my go-to.
Here’s what I started doing, and it’s dead simple:
- Just Dump It: Any idea, task, reminder, random thought – it goes into the firulai file. Immediately. Don’t think, just type.
- Super Simple Tags: Sometimes, if I felt like it, I’d add a really basic tag. Like, `#task` or `#idea` or `#groceries`. Nothing complicated. Sometimes I wouldn’t even bother with that.
- One Big File: At first, it was one giant, ever-growing text file. Later, I started doing one per month, just to keep the file size from getting totally insane.
- Search is Your Friend: Need to find something? Ctrl+F. That’s it. No complex database queries.
The main thing was, I stopped trying to make it perfect. That was the key. Perfection was the enemy. All those other systems, they wanted me to categorize everything perfectly, set due dates for every little thing, link notes together. It was exhausting!
How It’s Going
So, what’s the result? Well, my desk is still a bit messy. My digital life isn’t pristine. But I don’t lose ideas like I used to. I don’t forget major tasks nearly as much. When I feel overwhelmed, I just open my current firulai file and dump everything. It’s like a pressure release valve.
It’s not for everyone, I get that. Some folks thrive on those super-structured systems, and good for them. But for me, “firulai” is about embracing the chaos a little bit and just having one place, a really dumb, simple place, to put it all. It’s a bit like that messy workshop where the owner knows exactly where everything is, even if it looks like a bomb hit it to an outsider. That’s my firulai. It’s my organized mess, and it actually works for me, most of the time anyway. Better than anything else I’ve tried, that’s for sure.