165. Digital Brains: Protect Your Mental Bandwidth
Are you carrying too much in your head right now? Between client details, timelines, delegation, and daily decisions, it can feel like your brain never fully turns off. In this episode, I introduce the concept of a digital brain and explain how creating external storage for your ideas, systems, and responsibilities can dramatically lighten your mental load and support a more efficient interior design business.
I share why your human brain was never meant to hold everything and how relying on memory alone increases overwhelm and mistakes. You’ll learn how to create simple, centralized digital spaces that protect your time and mental bandwidth, support better delegation, and reduce the constant looping of unfinished tasks. This is about building safety and clarity into your business so you can lead with greater focus and intention.
You don’t need a full overhaul to begin. Choose one area where you can stop holding everything internally and give it a secure external home. When you free up mental space, you create more room for creativity, thoughtful leadership, and strategic growth in your design business.
If you've been thinking about working with me one-on-one, be sure to get on the private coaching waitlist! Click here to learn more about Design to Thrive and secure your spot to be the first to know when availability opens up.
What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
How a digital brain reduces overwhelm and mental clutter.
Why your human brain cannot reliably store business details.
The connection between organization and emotional safety.
How external systems support stronger delegation.
Why centralizing information improves team communication.
How protecting mental bandwidth increases efficiency and profitability.
A simple way to start building your own digital brain this week.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you're listening to episode 165. In this one, I'm going to talk to you about how you can create a digital brain or brains to lighten your mental load, ensure that things are done with precision and without slipping through the cracks, and ensure that you're running an efficient interior design business without so much mental overhead.
Far too often, I see designers feeling very scattered, as if there is a ping pong bouncing through your head. And while I know you hold a lot, I definitely do. Both for your business, for your clients, for your team, the concept I'm sharing today is going to make that feel so much easier and so much more seamless.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. Glad to be here with you as always. Welcome back to longtime listeners and also welcome to those of you who are newly finding the podcast. So glad to have you here.
I'm excited to be talking about today's topic, which is creating a digital brain to lighten your mental load. And this is something that I realized I needed to bring to you when I was having a client session.
If you've been listening to the podcast for a little while, you probably heard me promote my Create Your 2026 Roadmap goal-setting workshop. I had that in January. It was amazing. And I opened up some strategy sessions for participants who had taken that workshop with me so that we could dive into their goal for the year and create some plans, really make sure they are dialed in on their prioritization, etc.
Anyways, I was working with one of the designers that booked a call with me, and we were talking through some systems, project management, and delegation challenges. And I had one of those moments where I realized I do something now that really supports me in all three of those areas in systems, project management, I guess you could say time management too, delegation, all the things that I've never put a name to. And it's one of those where you go, oh yeah, I do that, and I don't even realize I do that. That's a thing, and that's actually really helpful, and not everyone does that. And that's usually a sign that I should make a podcast about it. So here we are.
And that thing that I was sharing with her is all about how to create what I call a digital brain whenever possible. So today, what I want to do is dive into exactly what I mean by digital brain. It's just a phrase that I made up, so probably you haven't heard about it. So I'll tell you what I mean. But let's also talk about why you need them, why it's important, the types of digital brains I use in my own life and business, and how you could do that too. And then, of course, how to get started with applying this concept to your business.
When I talk about a digital brain, it is essentially a digital holding space or storage location for anything and everything you want to record, remember, or reference. Okay? So it's a digital holding space so that you can record, remember, or reference, and maybe a combination of those things. It's where all of those to-dos, your ideas, systems, directions, things that you need to remember, it's where they all go so they're not swimming in your brain. You create an external versus internal storage system.
Now, we talk about the human brain quite a bit here on this podcast. It's fascinating, it's amazing, it has incredible capacity. And what we need to remember is that our human brains can typically only hold about four to seven items at a time. And if you consider how many balls you're juggling throughout the day, the people you're managing and the details that are critical to completing that project or having a successful business, there is a huge gap between what your human brain can hold, that four to seven items, and then the number of things that you need to hold and have space for or record of in your business. It's basically the Grand Canyon. There is a huge gap there.
Now, overwhelm, also, we talk about that here on the podcast as an emotion. That can be created by the way that you're thinking. So if you have thoughts like, I'm so behind, I'm drowning in work, there's so much to do. Of course, that can create that emotional response of overwhelm. But overwhelm can also be a result of your load being greater than your capacity. And that's what's going on when we talk about that huge gap where there's just too many inputs, too many pieces to remember, too many details to sort for you to possibly ever hold by yourself.
You've always got the load of the things that you need to accomplish in a day. But so much of the work that is happening is a mental load. There's the load that you carry of what is not recorded, documented, and does not have a place to live. Who is doing what? When's that shipping? Did it ship? When's the deadline? Where are we in the process? What am I even supposed to be doing right now? When you don't have a system to capture this information, you never feel like you can turn off your brain. You are far less productive, and for sure, things are going to be missed. Those balls are going to be dropped at some point.
The beautiful thing about a digital brain that the human brain does not have is that our human capacity is limited by the amount that we can keep top of mind at once. But a digital brain can infinitely expand without exponentially requiring more of your bandwidth. Right, so this is one of those things that you can really leverage to create better experiences for your business, better results, and deliver a higher level service and be a more thoughtful leader without having sustained continued effort from having to hold it all. Okay?
So this is why this is really important, because the more that you store in these external brains, the more your internal capacity increases. That means you have more mental space for creativity and focus, and you also have the emotional and mental bandwidth to attune to your business, your clients, and your team as the leader.
Creating these external holding zones is something you can use for yourself and your business, and I certainly hope you do at the end of this episode, get started with this. And it's also something that you can train your employees to do as well. Everyone is going to benefit from implementing these digital brains and the benefit to the company as a whole is going to be huge.
The other thing I'll note is that everything I'm sharing here today can be applied to your personal life as well. I know I certainly use this. Okay, if you have kids, if you have parents you're taking care of, if you're involved in a community organization, there's so many things we do in our full lives. There's a lot to keep track of there. So take what I'm sharing in your business and then you can apply it to your personal life as well.
So, as we go into this, just remember a digital brain is meant to take what's in your human brain and give it an external storage spot to record, remember, and reference. Let's talk about some of these examples now of how you could use these in your business. And then I also want to talk about the characteristics that make for the most efficient and effective ways to go about doing this.
Let's start with some examples. These are all ones that I use in my own business and certainly work with my clients on as well. The first one is the calendar, a digital calendar. And yes, of course, we all know that you can use a calendar to jot down your appointments, or not really jot them down, I guess, click them in. But you put in, oh, I have to be at this place at this time, and I'm going to plan my day, and maybe I'm going to set aside some things for this. But I want you to know that you can leverage this tool as a digital brain even more than you think.
A great way to do this is to help you manage the more reactive things that happen throughout the day, those requests that require a timely response, the people that you need to get back to by the end of the day, all of those things.
So when an email comes in with a request, what you can do is use your appointments on your calendar, so like block off a time of, okay, at 4:00 p.m., I'm going to do this thing, market, however you want, and then use the notes and description piece of the calendar appointment to go ahead and outline the actions you need to take, maybe note who the sender was and the subject line so that way you can sort for the email after it's been filed. I always suggest once you read the email, take exactly what you need, make a plan for how you'll address it if you're not going to respond immediately, and then file that email so it's not cluttering up your inbox and you're not having to mentally process all of those emails over and over again. So, really leverage the notes and description piece of a calendar appointment.
The other way you can do this is to set recurring times on the calendar for tasks that you know you're going to have to do at certain intervals or on a regular basis. So a great example of this is monthly bookkeeping. Now, this might just sound like, oh, this is how to manage your time. But it's really actually a digital storage space for you, because for all those tasks that you do on a regular basis, if you don't have a way or a system for making sure they happen and they're brought into your awareness on a regular basis, you have to actively work to remember them, and that takes up mental bandwidth.
Another example of this could be your team meetings. Maybe this is the Monday meeting you hold with your team, or maybe it's a check-in that you do with one of your designers if you have a team or maybe it's a contractor, put that in as a recurring time and then use the description to make notes of what that agenda needs to be, questions you need to ask, what you need to assign. It's a great way to use your calendar with greater effectiveness.
Another way you can use digital spaces as a brain is to implement a project management program, or maybe you have one, but you don't really use it. So, to start actually using it. This could look like ClickUp. That's what I use in my business, but I also know I've got lots of clients who like Asana or Monday.com. Notion is one I'm hearing more and more about, and I'm intrigued by it, but I don't have enough experience to say yay or nay. But you can use one of those, or if you want to keep it really simple, I do have clients where they have used a Google Doc as a project management program essentially. It is certainly not as sophisticated, but it is simple, and it's a way that you can record information to assign tasks to people, use it as a checklist, all of those types of things, so that you're taking what's in your head and putting it somewhere secure.
Within these programs or on that Google Doc, you're going to record information about the tasks, the timeline, the conversations you've had, the decisions, the delegation status, exactly, you know, what it is you gave to someone to do, whatever it is you need to remember and also whatever it is you need to be able to easily reference in the future when you're coming back to a task or needing to look at something new you're doing and go back to, oh, okay, what was that thing that plays into now the new thing I'm doing, but is slightly different.
One of the things that I love about using a project management program as a digital brain is the ability for me to record what I have thought about, what I've asked about, what I've done, what I've requested. It's funny, I think what I've found is that with the amount of information that I process, the projects that are in play, the number of clients that I manage, and I'm sure this is true of you too, I will completely forget what I asked someone to do. Or I'll have a question about something, and then it'll get answered by my assistant, and then I'll have that same question again. And I'll need to go back into my project management software and look for it because, typically, I already asked the question. And of course, this isn't always the case, but it can be so helpful.
Or even if, let's say, I have my assistant making a landing page for a program, and I'm wanting to give feedback for that, and I'm noting the edits that need to be made. I can do all of that in one location, so that way, when she goes to do the work, she's very clear on exactly the feedback I'm giving and the changes I want to have made. And then it makes it easier for when it's put back to me for review, for me to look at that list and go, okay, now I'm looking at this newly revised version of the landing page. I'm going to go through my edits that I requested, and I'm going to look for those specifically, versus having to essentially have me edit the entire page again. I already know what I've targeted, and I know what to look for to make sure that everything got done the way that I wanted it to get done and turned out the way that I was envisioning when I requested those edits. So it can just be so helpful because it's like you record it, and then you can forget it until it's time to remember. And to me, that is really, really priceless.
So let's talk about some other examples of digital brains. You could have a password storage system, such as LastPass. This can be great if you've got contractors logging into some of your various platforms. You can use it for storing account information. A lot of my clients love to have a spreadsheet where there's a list of the vendors that they use per category. They will probably have some login information, the account terms or account number, some instructions on how to contact the rep, or how to place an orde,r or how to submit a CFA, whatever it is that would be pertinent for either them to remember or if they're delegating to a team member to make sure that the team member can do that.
And that can be a real helpful prompter in terms of efficient sourcing where you can go and look and see, okay, I know I need this category, it needs to be in this price point, it needs to be in this style. I'm going to go look, oh, yep, I see the options that I've got. I've already vetted these. I'm going to go look at those first. Okay? There's just so much less processing that has to happen in order to do the task.
And then we've got the, I'll call it the anything that falls under the "this is how it's done here" bucket. Okay? So digital brains are great for recording how you organize your files. So have that documented so that way everyone is organizing, naming, and storing files in the same way. The same thing goes with when you're thinking about your client processes or business systems, having those all recorded, or recorded to the extent that you know what they are or have capacity to record at this point, right? So maybe it's not entirely flushed out, and it will never be the final version. Also, you're always going to tweak it, but store it somewhere so you're not remembering.
Job descriptions, another one. Then you're not wondering, is this person supposed to be the person doing that? Are they upholding their end of the agreement? Just put all of that in a job description, which you should have in order to effectively hire to begin with, but it makes then doing your reviews and evaluations, giving feedback so much more clear and easy. Any kind of templates or documentation, and something like meeting agendas, email templates, those kind of like repeatable communication tools that you need and want to think through once and then be able to repurpose and use as a springboard over and over again.
So it's anything that you need to be able to go back to and say, yep, I've already made this decision about how this is done and now I'm not going to think about it until it's actually time to think about it where there's going to be an update made, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. Okay?
So before we move on, I do want to talk about, is your email inbox or Slack a digital brain? Okay. I know a lot of people use their email or Slack as a storage holding spot. So my answer to this is kind of yes and no. Okay, yes, it is a record of things. There's information that you can search through and store. But I will say it's not very effective because usually you are not very organized in those spaces. And here's a big piece of this.
The specific bits of information you need to access in the future, when you need to remember or reference, they are often buried among loads of other correspondence and other details that will not be relevant to the moment you need to go find that information. So what that means is you're increasing the demand on your brain without increasing the value of your time spent and actions taken. So that's why it's, yes, I guess you could call it a digital storing space, maybe, yeah, I'll give you that. But I also don't think it's the best place.
And another issue with both of these is that it is really difficult to have a sense of safety in a dumping ground, which is often what email and Slack is. One of the reasons your brain will try to juggle and loop on these to-dos and things you want to remember and things you're supposed to do or how it's done, is because it's afraid. It's afraid of forgetting, it's afraid of failing, it's afraid of something not getting done or a mistake being made. It's afraid of details being missed that should have been included, and the client's going to be mad. It's afraid. And so you have to create a sense of safety for your brain through your organization and knowing that there is a consistent, organized holding space that it can truly, truly count on.
And that is really one of the key components that will make your digital brain or brains, however many of these you create, successful. So let's talk a little bit now about how to set these up so that they are effective and they work well for you.
Right along with what I was just saying, these digital brains, they need to be central, accessible, and organized. So this was what I was talking about. The human brain worries about dropping the ball, and it needs a safety net. And it needs to know that the digital space is a secure safety net, that there are not big gaping holes in it. Okay? And that comes from accessible and organized and central. And in order to create those conditions, you have to have a constrained set of storage locations.
If you were to even think about actual storage spaces, like you know those rooms, kind of, or garages you can rent, you would not want to have those all over town and then have the addresses on little scraps of paper. It would be horrible and you'd waste a bunch of time, you wouldn't know where you're going, right? You can just picture it.
So it's the exact same thing with your digital storage spaces. You want to make these spaces easy to access and easy to find, both for you and your team. And if you have a team, and especially if it's a larger team and there's people with very specialized roles or things where you don't want them seeing certain things, you can always play around with access levels or sharing permissions, that kind of thing as needed. Okay?
So these locations could be a Google Drive, it could be Dropbox, it could be a project management platform. Likely, you're already using something like this in your business. And so now it's just about refining it to decide where things go and what types of things go in those different locations. So that way you know where they are and easily find it.
Now, speaking about ease, let's talk about this important piece as well. Whatever system you use or the way that you set up these digital brains, it needs to be easy for your brain to understand. This speaks directly to you, knowing you. You have to set these up in a way that makes sense for the way that you think. Now that doesn't mean that you can't take some suggestions from people, see how other people do it, tweak it as you go, as you start to learn. But I really want you to think about, if it doesn't work for you and it works for someone else, it still doesn't work for you. Okay?
And I definitely have had that, you know, throughout the years, where I'll have different assistants. I've had a few different ones. One of them was like very set on putting all of our systems in ClickUp as the central storage location. And I saw some benefit to that and was willing to give it a try, but we tested it out on a couple things. And it was horrible for me. It was like I could never figure out where in the folders it was. So then I would have something I needed to get updated and I would want to or like I would want to go reference something and I couldn't find my own systems. And it was a real challenge. And so, yeah, we don't do that anymore.
All of my systems are in Google Drive. And then we do have a place where my assistant can access those systems and processes, but they are linked to the Google Drive document because that is how my brain naturally wants to organize things. It makes sense for me. I talk to other people where it's like, I hate Google Drive, I love Dropbox. Whatever it is for you, just make sure it works for you. Okay? Because if it feels cumbersome, if it feels confusing or it's disjointed, you will not use it, and that is the whole point.
Once you have these digital brains set up, it's important to have a routine or process around capturing information and regularly updating the brain. This is essential. We can look at this in terms of some of the things that just pop up and then some of the more long-term static elements that you might be storing. So for those things that pop up that need to be recorded, they need to be updated or maybe addressed in a timely manner, one of the simplest things you can do is just write it down. I know for me personally, if someone tells me to do something or I think to do something but I don't write it down, it is going to go from my brain if I'm not constantly trying to loop it back in there and that's exhausting.
So you could use a notebook, a single notebook, not 10 different notebooks. I know that could be a challenge, but I promise you, you can start to make that shift. Maybe it's a notebook you carry with you at all times. I know another one of my clients loves to just have a Google Doc that is always open on her laptop, and that is where she creates that running list. That works really well for her.
You could have a calendar appointment where you use the description to put some of those things that you need to make updates or assign to yourself or to others. You could also have kind of like a brain dump area in your project management platform, or have someone else do this.
I know another one of my clients, she doesn't particularly love Asana, but she does know it's super important for her and her team. So one of her team members' jobs at meeting is to be updating Asana and putting things in as she goes. Another one of my clients will have one of her team members do it after the meeting and create those action items.
And of course, I know not everyone who's listening has a team to rely on, but it's another option that you could use for yourself as well, where you put those pieces in there and then create tasks or do whatever you need to do after the fact. So it's essential that you're capturing the information as you go so that it is not lost and it's not looping. And then you need to have a time where you're coming back and putting that information somewhere.
So that's where if you had a calendar appointment every day on your recurring tasks to say update the brain, whatever your brain is, you could go to that calendar appointment, see your notes from the day, and then be able to put them in the appropriate spots. But you could do that with a Google Doc, a notebook, the brain dump in a project management platform, wherever it is. But it's we have a place to capture the information and then a time to organize the information. So that's the rhythm.
For some of that more static information that's being retained, whether that is your client process, systems, templates, those things that you're not going to be necessarily having reactive incoming throughout the day. It's more of these are the tools that I'm using and referencing on a regular basis. You still want to have a spot to capture your thoughts and ideas and have a time where you're periodically then going and looking through those notes, assigning next steps to yourself or to others, and making sure that everything stays organized.
Again, this can be super simple. One of the things I've done in the past that's worked really well for me is to have an evaluation document. I keep it with the project plans, and I keep notes as I go, where maybe I am running a training a certain way, and after I deliver it, I have some thoughts about what I'd like to do differently or what I want to tweak or add. And then that's there for me for the next time when I'm making an iteration on what I've already created. So that way I know my next steps. I don't have to keep track of it. It's just there for me.
Maybe for you, it could be on a project. Maybe you have a project evaluation document where you make a note of, oh yeah, I really need to add this thing to my next contract or we need to set up this type of template to make sure we're not recreating the wheel in this deliverable, whatever it is. Have a central place again to store it. And then you want to set some recurring times to revisit those notes and decide what you're doing with them. So that could be once a quarter, every six months. You'll know what's appropriate based on what it is that you are managing.
As always, with all that I am sharing, get started with what feels doable. This is a simple idea, but it's also a very big idea, and it really can transform how you carry the load of running your interior design business. This is something that has so much potential for you. And at the same time, you don't need to do a full overhaul or to drop everything to invent a brand new approach right this minute. This is something that can be implemented over time, step-by-step.
So think about your next best step. What is that? What's one easy and simple way you could start playing with the idea of creating a digital brain? A spot that holds what you want to record, remember, or refer to so that you can spend your mental energy on something that actually requires it. You don't want to spend all your energy trying to store this information.
You're going to be more efficient, which of course is going to lead to more profitability, which is always a great thing. You're going to stop waking up at 2:00 a.m., going, did I do that? Because let's face it, that's happened to all of us. And also, your team and client communication are going to be so much more streamlined, which is going to be a better client experience. The workflow inside your office is going to be so much smoother. It's a great idea to do this. There's really so many benefits, and I hope that you give it a try. And if you do, I'd really love to hear how you're using this concept and making it work for you.
That's what I've got for you today and I'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode. I'm going to be bringing you Jacqueline Edwards. She's the CEO and founder of Ochre and Beige, and we're going to be talking about messaging, the specific word choices you can use to convey your expertise to the luxury market, and how knowing what to say can help you feel so confident attracting your best-fit clients.
What I love about this conversation, and of course, what I love about all of the conversations I try and bring you here, is that it is a blend of taking the strategy and blending it with the mindset required behind making these essential shifts. I know you're going to love this. I know you're going to get so much from it. And I don't want you to miss it. So make sure you hit that follow or subscribe button on the podcast, make sure it comes directly to your feed. And until we meet again, I'm wishing you a beautiful couple of weeks.
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
Far too often, I see designers feeling very scattered, as if there is a ping pong bouncing through your head. And while I know you hold a lot, I definitely do. Both for your business, for your clients, for your team, the concept I'm sharing today is going to make that feel so much easier and so much more seamless.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. Glad to be here with you as always. Welcome back to longtime listeners and also welcome to those of you who are newly finding the podcast. So glad to have you here.
I'm excited to be talking about today's topic, which is creating a digital brain to lighten your mental load. And this is something that I realized I needed to bring to you when I was having a client session.
If you've been listening to the podcast for a little while, you probably heard me promote my Create Your 2026 Roadmap goal-setting workshop. I had that in January. It was amazing. And I opened up some strategy sessions for participants who had taken that workshop with me so that we could dive into their goal for the year and create some plans, really make sure they are dialed in on their prioritization, etc.
Anyways, I was working with one of the designers that booked a call with me, and we were talking through some systems, project management, and delegation challenges. And I had one of those moments where I realized I do something now that really supports me in all three of those areas in systems, project management, I guess you could say time management too, delegation, all the things that I've never put a name to. And it's one of those where you go, oh yeah, I do that, and I don't even realize I do that. That's a thing, and that's actually really helpful, and not everyone does that. And that's usually a sign that I should make a podcast about it. So here we are.
And that thing that I was sharing with her is all about how to create what I call a digital brain whenever possible. So today, what I want to do is dive into exactly what I mean by digital brain. It's just a phrase that I made up, so probably you haven't heard about it. So I'll tell you what I mean. But let's also talk about why you need them, why it's important, the types of digital brains I use in my own life and business, and how you could do that too. And then, of course, how to get started with applying this concept to your business.
When I talk about a digital brain, it is essentially a digital holding space or storage location for anything and everything you want to record, remember, or reference. Okay? So it's a digital holding space so that you can record, remember, or reference, and maybe a combination of those things. It's where all of those to-dos, your ideas, systems, directions, things that you need to remember, it's where they all go so they're not swimming in your brain. You create an external versus internal storage system.
Now, we talk about the human brain quite a bit here on this podcast. It's fascinating, it's amazing, it has incredible capacity. And what we need to remember is that our human brains can typically only hold about four to seven items at a time. And if you consider how many balls you're juggling throughout the day, the people you're managing and the details that are critical to completing that project or having a successful business, there is a huge gap between what your human brain can hold, that four to seven items, and then the number of things that you need to hold and have space for or record of in your business. It's basically the Grand Canyon. There is a huge gap there.
Now, overwhelm, also, we talk about that here on the podcast as an emotion. That can be created by the way that you're thinking. So if you have thoughts like, I'm so behind, I'm drowning in work, there's so much to do. Of course, that can create that emotional response of overwhelm. But overwhelm can also be a result of your load being greater than your capacity. And that's what's going on when we talk about that huge gap where there's just too many inputs, too many pieces to remember, too many details to sort for you to possibly ever hold by yourself.
You've always got the load of the things that you need to accomplish in a day. But so much of the work that is happening is a mental load. There's the load that you carry of what is not recorded, documented, and does not have a place to live. Who is doing what? When's that shipping? Did it ship? When's the deadline? Where are we in the process? What am I even supposed to be doing right now? When you don't have a system to capture this information, you never feel like you can turn off your brain. You are far less productive, and for sure, things are going to be missed. Those balls are going to be dropped at some point.
The beautiful thing about a digital brain that the human brain does not have is that our human capacity is limited by the amount that we can keep top of mind at once. But a digital brain can infinitely expand without exponentially requiring more of your bandwidth. Right, so this is one of those things that you can really leverage to create better experiences for your business, better results, and deliver a higher level service and be a more thoughtful leader without having sustained continued effort from having to hold it all. Okay?
So this is why this is really important, because the more that you store in these external brains, the more your internal capacity increases. That means you have more mental space for creativity and focus, and you also have the emotional and mental bandwidth to attune to your business, your clients, and your team as the leader.
Creating these external holding zones is something you can use for yourself and your business, and I certainly hope you do at the end of this episode, get started with this. And it's also something that you can train your employees to do as well. Everyone is going to benefit from implementing these digital brains and the benefit to the company as a whole is going to be huge.
The other thing I'll note is that everything I'm sharing here today can be applied to your personal life as well. I know I certainly use this. Okay, if you have kids, if you have parents you're taking care of, if you're involved in a community organization, there's so many things we do in our full lives. There's a lot to keep track of there. So take what I'm sharing in your business and then you can apply it to your personal life as well.
So, as we go into this, just remember a digital brain is meant to take what's in your human brain and give it an external storage spot to record, remember, and reference. Let's talk about some of these examples now of how you could use these in your business. And then I also want to talk about the characteristics that make for the most efficient and effective ways to go about doing this.
Let's start with some examples. These are all ones that I use in my own business and certainly work with my clients on as well. The first one is the calendar, a digital calendar. And yes, of course, we all know that you can use a calendar to jot down your appointments, or not really jot them down, I guess, click them in. But you put in, oh, I have to be at this place at this time, and I'm going to plan my day, and maybe I'm going to set aside some things for this. But I want you to know that you can leverage this tool as a digital brain even more than you think.
A great way to do this is to help you manage the more reactive things that happen throughout the day, those requests that require a timely response, the people that you need to get back to by the end of the day, all of those things.
So when an email comes in with a request, what you can do is use your appointments on your calendar, so like block off a time of, okay, at 4:00 p.m., I'm going to do this thing, market, however you want, and then use the notes and description piece of the calendar appointment to go ahead and outline the actions you need to take, maybe note who the sender was and the subject line so that way you can sort for the email after it's been filed. I always suggest once you read the email, take exactly what you need, make a plan for how you'll address it if you're not going to respond immediately, and then file that email so it's not cluttering up your inbox and you're not having to mentally process all of those emails over and over again. So, really leverage the notes and description piece of a calendar appointment.
The other way you can do this is to set recurring times on the calendar for tasks that you know you're going to have to do at certain intervals or on a regular basis. So a great example of this is monthly bookkeeping. Now, this might just sound like, oh, this is how to manage your time. But it's really actually a digital storage space for you, because for all those tasks that you do on a regular basis, if you don't have a way or a system for making sure they happen and they're brought into your awareness on a regular basis, you have to actively work to remember them, and that takes up mental bandwidth.
Another example of this could be your team meetings. Maybe this is the Monday meeting you hold with your team, or maybe it's a check-in that you do with one of your designers if you have a team or maybe it's a contractor, put that in as a recurring time and then use the description to make notes of what that agenda needs to be, questions you need to ask, what you need to assign. It's a great way to use your calendar with greater effectiveness.
Another way you can use digital spaces as a brain is to implement a project management program, or maybe you have one, but you don't really use it. So, to start actually using it. This could look like ClickUp. That's what I use in my business, but I also know I've got lots of clients who like Asana or Monday.com. Notion is one I'm hearing more and more about, and I'm intrigued by it, but I don't have enough experience to say yay or nay. But you can use one of those, or if you want to keep it really simple, I do have clients where they have used a Google Doc as a project management program essentially. It is certainly not as sophisticated, but it is simple, and it's a way that you can record information to assign tasks to people, use it as a checklist, all of those types of things, so that you're taking what's in your head and putting it somewhere secure.
Within these programs or on that Google Doc, you're going to record information about the tasks, the timeline, the conversations you've had, the decisions, the delegation status, exactly, you know, what it is you gave to someone to do, whatever it is you need to remember and also whatever it is you need to be able to easily reference in the future when you're coming back to a task or needing to look at something new you're doing and go back to, oh, okay, what was that thing that plays into now the new thing I'm doing, but is slightly different.
One of the things that I love about using a project management program as a digital brain is the ability for me to record what I have thought about, what I've asked about, what I've done, what I've requested. It's funny, I think what I've found is that with the amount of information that I process, the projects that are in play, the number of clients that I manage, and I'm sure this is true of you too, I will completely forget what I asked someone to do. Or I'll have a question about something, and then it'll get answered by my assistant, and then I'll have that same question again. And I'll need to go back into my project management software and look for it because, typically, I already asked the question. And of course, this isn't always the case, but it can be so helpful.
Or even if, let's say, I have my assistant making a landing page for a program, and I'm wanting to give feedback for that, and I'm noting the edits that need to be made. I can do all of that in one location, so that way, when she goes to do the work, she's very clear on exactly the feedback I'm giving and the changes I want to have made. And then it makes it easier for when it's put back to me for review, for me to look at that list and go, okay, now I'm looking at this newly revised version of the landing page. I'm going to go through my edits that I requested, and I'm going to look for those specifically, versus having to essentially have me edit the entire page again. I already know what I've targeted, and I know what to look for to make sure that everything got done the way that I wanted it to get done and turned out the way that I was envisioning when I requested those edits. So it can just be so helpful because it's like you record it, and then you can forget it until it's time to remember. And to me, that is really, really priceless.
So let's talk about some other examples of digital brains. You could have a password storage system, such as LastPass. This can be great if you've got contractors logging into some of your various platforms. You can use it for storing account information. A lot of my clients love to have a spreadsheet where there's a list of the vendors that they use per category. They will probably have some login information, the account terms or account number, some instructions on how to contact the rep, or how to place an orde,r or how to submit a CFA, whatever it is that would be pertinent for either them to remember or if they're delegating to a team member to make sure that the team member can do that.
And that can be a real helpful prompter in terms of efficient sourcing where you can go and look and see, okay, I know I need this category, it needs to be in this price point, it needs to be in this style. I'm going to go look, oh, yep, I see the options that I've got. I've already vetted these. I'm going to go look at those first. Okay? There's just so much less processing that has to happen in order to do the task.
And then we've got the, I'll call it the anything that falls under the "this is how it's done here" bucket. Okay? So digital brains are great for recording how you organize your files. So have that documented so that way everyone is organizing, naming, and storing files in the same way. The same thing goes with when you're thinking about your client processes or business systems, having those all recorded, or recorded to the extent that you know what they are or have capacity to record at this point, right? So maybe it's not entirely flushed out, and it will never be the final version. Also, you're always going to tweak it, but store it somewhere so you're not remembering.
Job descriptions, another one. Then you're not wondering, is this person supposed to be the person doing that? Are they upholding their end of the agreement? Just put all of that in a job description, which you should have in order to effectively hire to begin with, but it makes then doing your reviews and evaluations, giving feedback so much more clear and easy. Any kind of templates or documentation, and something like meeting agendas, email templates, those kind of like repeatable communication tools that you need and want to think through once and then be able to repurpose and use as a springboard over and over again.
So it's anything that you need to be able to go back to and say, yep, I've already made this decision about how this is done and now I'm not going to think about it until it's actually time to think about it where there's going to be an update made, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. Okay?
So before we move on, I do want to talk about, is your email inbox or Slack a digital brain? Okay. I know a lot of people use their email or Slack as a storage holding spot. So my answer to this is kind of yes and no. Okay, yes, it is a record of things. There's information that you can search through and store. But I will say it's not very effective because usually you are not very organized in those spaces. And here's a big piece of this.
The specific bits of information you need to access in the future, when you need to remember or reference, they are often buried among loads of other correspondence and other details that will not be relevant to the moment you need to go find that information. So what that means is you're increasing the demand on your brain without increasing the value of your time spent and actions taken. So that's why it's, yes, I guess you could call it a digital storing space, maybe, yeah, I'll give you that. But I also don't think it's the best place.
And another issue with both of these is that it is really difficult to have a sense of safety in a dumping ground, which is often what email and Slack is. One of the reasons your brain will try to juggle and loop on these to-dos and things you want to remember and things you're supposed to do or how it's done, is because it's afraid. It's afraid of forgetting, it's afraid of failing, it's afraid of something not getting done or a mistake being made. It's afraid of details being missed that should have been included, and the client's going to be mad. It's afraid. And so you have to create a sense of safety for your brain through your organization and knowing that there is a consistent, organized holding space that it can truly, truly count on.
And that is really one of the key components that will make your digital brain or brains, however many of these you create, successful. So let's talk a little bit now about how to set these up so that they are effective and they work well for you.
Right along with what I was just saying, these digital brains, they need to be central, accessible, and organized. So this was what I was talking about. The human brain worries about dropping the ball, and it needs a safety net. And it needs to know that the digital space is a secure safety net, that there are not big gaping holes in it. Okay? And that comes from accessible and organized and central. And in order to create those conditions, you have to have a constrained set of storage locations.
If you were to even think about actual storage spaces, like you know those rooms, kind of, or garages you can rent, you would not want to have those all over town and then have the addresses on little scraps of paper. It would be horrible and you'd waste a bunch of time, you wouldn't know where you're going, right? You can just picture it.
So it's the exact same thing with your digital storage spaces. You want to make these spaces easy to access and easy to find, both for you and your team. And if you have a team, and especially if it's a larger team and there's people with very specialized roles or things where you don't want them seeing certain things, you can always play around with access levels or sharing permissions, that kind of thing as needed. Okay?
So these locations could be a Google Drive, it could be Dropbox, it could be a project management platform. Likely, you're already using something like this in your business. And so now it's just about refining it to decide where things go and what types of things go in those different locations. So that way you know where they are and easily find it.
Now, speaking about ease, let's talk about this important piece as well. Whatever system you use or the way that you set up these digital brains, it needs to be easy for your brain to understand. This speaks directly to you, knowing you. You have to set these up in a way that makes sense for the way that you think. Now that doesn't mean that you can't take some suggestions from people, see how other people do it, tweak it as you go, as you start to learn. But I really want you to think about, if it doesn't work for you and it works for someone else, it still doesn't work for you. Okay?
And I definitely have had that, you know, throughout the years, where I'll have different assistants. I've had a few different ones. One of them was like very set on putting all of our systems in ClickUp as the central storage location. And I saw some benefit to that and was willing to give it a try, but we tested it out on a couple things. And it was horrible for me. It was like I could never figure out where in the folders it was. So then I would have something I needed to get updated and I would want to or like I would want to go reference something and I couldn't find my own systems. And it was a real challenge. And so, yeah, we don't do that anymore.
All of my systems are in Google Drive. And then we do have a place where my assistant can access those systems and processes, but they are linked to the Google Drive document because that is how my brain naturally wants to organize things. It makes sense for me. I talk to other people where it's like, I hate Google Drive, I love Dropbox. Whatever it is for you, just make sure it works for you. Okay? Because if it feels cumbersome, if it feels confusing or it's disjointed, you will not use it, and that is the whole point.
Once you have these digital brains set up, it's important to have a routine or process around capturing information and regularly updating the brain. This is essential. We can look at this in terms of some of the things that just pop up and then some of the more long-term static elements that you might be storing. So for those things that pop up that need to be recorded, they need to be updated or maybe addressed in a timely manner, one of the simplest things you can do is just write it down. I know for me personally, if someone tells me to do something or I think to do something but I don't write it down, it is going to go from my brain if I'm not constantly trying to loop it back in there and that's exhausting.
So you could use a notebook, a single notebook, not 10 different notebooks. I know that could be a challenge, but I promise you, you can start to make that shift. Maybe it's a notebook you carry with you at all times. I know another one of my clients loves to just have a Google Doc that is always open on her laptop, and that is where she creates that running list. That works really well for her.
You could have a calendar appointment where you use the description to put some of those things that you need to make updates or assign to yourself or to others. You could also have kind of like a brain dump area in your project management platform, or have someone else do this.
I know another one of my clients, she doesn't particularly love Asana, but she does know it's super important for her and her team. So one of her team members' jobs at meeting is to be updating Asana and putting things in as she goes. Another one of my clients will have one of her team members do it after the meeting and create those action items.
And of course, I know not everyone who's listening has a team to rely on, but it's another option that you could use for yourself as well, where you put those pieces in there and then create tasks or do whatever you need to do after the fact. So it's essential that you're capturing the information as you go so that it is not lost and it's not looping. And then you need to have a time where you're coming back and putting that information somewhere.
So that's where if you had a calendar appointment every day on your recurring tasks to say update the brain, whatever your brain is, you could go to that calendar appointment, see your notes from the day, and then be able to put them in the appropriate spots. But you could do that with a Google Doc, a notebook, the brain dump in a project management platform, wherever it is. But it's we have a place to capture the information and then a time to organize the information. So that's the rhythm.
For some of that more static information that's being retained, whether that is your client process, systems, templates, those things that you're not going to be necessarily having reactive incoming throughout the day. It's more of these are the tools that I'm using and referencing on a regular basis. You still want to have a spot to capture your thoughts and ideas and have a time where you're periodically then going and looking through those notes, assigning next steps to yourself or to others, and making sure that everything stays organized.
Again, this can be super simple. One of the things I've done in the past that's worked really well for me is to have an evaluation document. I keep it with the project plans, and I keep notes as I go, where maybe I am running a training a certain way, and after I deliver it, I have some thoughts about what I'd like to do differently or what I want to tweak or add. And then that's there for me for the next time when I'm making an iteration on what I've already created. So that way I know my next steps. I don't have to keep track of it. It's just there for me.
Maybe for you, it could be on a project. Maybe you have a project evaluation document where you make a note of, oh yeah, I really need to add this thing to my next contract or we need to set up this type of template to make sure we're not recreating the wheel in this deliverable, whatever it is. Have a central place again to store it. And then you want to set some recurring times to revisit those notes and decide what you're doing with them. So that could be once a quarter, every six months. You'll know what's appropriate based on what it is that you are managing.
As always, with all that I am sharing, get started with what feels doable. This is a simple idea, but it's also a very big idea, and it really can transform how you carry the load of running your interior design business. This is something that has so much potential for you. And at the same time, you don't need to do a full overhaul or to drop everything to invent a brand new approach right this minute. This is something that can be implemented over time, step-by-step.
So think about your next best step. What is that? What's one easy and simple way you could start playing with the idea of creating a digital brain? A spot that holds what you want to record, remember, or refer to so that you can spend your mental energy on something that actually requires it. You don't want to spend all your energy trying to store this information.
You're going to be more efficient, which of course is going to lead to more profitability, which is always a great thing. You're going to stop waking up at 2:00 a.m., going, did I do that? Because let's face it, that's happened to all of us. And also, your team and client communication are going to be so much more streamlined, which is going to be a better client experience. The workflow inside your office is going to be so much smoother. It's a great idea to do this. There's really so many benefits, and I hope that you give it a try. And if you do, I'd really love to hear how you're using this concept and making it work for you.
That's what I've got for you today and I'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode. I'm going to be bringing you Jacqueline Edwards. She's the CEO and founder of Ochre and Beige, and we're going to be talking about messaging, the specific word choices you can use to convey your expertise to the luxury market, and how knowing what to say can help you feel so confident attracting your best-fit clients.
What I love about this conversation, and of course, what I love about all of the conversations I try and bring you here, is that it is a blend of taking the strategy and blending it with the mindset required behind making these essential shifts. I know you're going to love this. I know you're going to get so much from it. And I don't want you to miss it. So make sure you hit that follow or subscribe button on the podcast, make sure it comes directly to your feed. And until we meet again, I'm wishing you a beautiful couple of weeks.
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
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