Episode 36 | Get It Out of Your Head

Why documenting your processes never actually happens

When you think about capturing your processes, you probably picture sitting down with a blank document and writing out every single step of everything you do, all from memory. Just reading that sounds exhausting. It feels like a giant project you don’t have time for, so it lands on the someday list and stays there.

And even when you push through and try it, writing from memory doesn’t really work. You forget steps because you’re trying to remember the task instead of actually doing it. You leave out the tiny details that only show up when your hands are on the work, whether that’s clicking around your computer or doing something in person. What you end up with is a half-accurate process you don’t fully trust.

I say all of this from experience. When I wait to capture a process later, I forget things, I stall, and honestly, I just don’t want to do it. It turns into a looming task I keep avoiding, and I’m guessing a lot of you can relate.

The shift: capture it as you go

Here’s what to do instead: stop capturing your processes from memory, and start capturing them as you go. The next time you sit down to actually do a task, document it while you’re doing it, not after.

You have three easy ways to pull this off:

• A voice memo. Talk out loud while you work, narrating what you’re doing step by step. This one is perfect for tasks that live mostly in your head, the ones full of little decisions and judgment calls, because you can explain your thinking and not just the clicks.
• A screen recording. Hit record and click through the task like you’re showing a friend how it works. This is the one for anything that happens on your computer, where someone would need to see the screen, the URLs, and exactly where you’re clicking.
• A quick note. Jot down each step as you move through it. This is great for short, linear tasks that don’t need a whole recording.

You don’t need all three. You just need whichever one is easiest for the task in front of you.

The reason this works so well is that it’s almost free. You were already going to do the task, so you’re just adding a thin layer of capture on top of something you had to do anyway. There’s no separate two-hour block to document your whole business, just pressing record or jotting notes on work you were doing regardless.

Where to start

Don’t overthink it. Pick a task that fits one of these three categories:

• Tasks you do over and over. The repeatable stuff pays you back the fastest.
• Tasks only you know how to do. If you disappeared for a week and nobody could pick these up, they’re your biggest risk.
• Tasks that feel like a scramble every single time. If you’re half reinventing it on the spot, capturing it once will save you the most stress.

Let it be messy

It might feel a little awkward the first time you narrate yourself out loud or watch yourself click around on a recording. That’s completely normal, and I want you to let it be messy. If you’re a solo business owner, nobody else has to see this version but you. It’s rough on purpose, because a rough version that actually exists is worth so much more than a polished one that just never gets made.

Here’s what this can look like in real life. Picture a service provider with a new client onboarding next week. Instead of trying to write out her onboarding steps from memory on a random Tuesday, she records her screen the next time she actually onboards someone. It’s accurate, it’s done, and it never became a separate project.

Or picture a course creator uploading a new lesson. She turns on a voice memo and talks through exactly what she’s doing as she does it. Now she has the real process, captured in real time, with all the little details still intact.

“But my process is never the same twice”

I hear you. But you’re not trying to carve the perfect, never-changes version into stone. You’re getting a real rough draft out of your head and into the world. Capture it once, roughly, and the next time you do the task, tweak it and refine it a little. That’s how a living process actually gets built: in layers over time, not in one perfect sitting.

Systems and processes are never one and done. They evolve as your business evolves, as you change tools, and as your needs change. So if you’re stalling because you think it has to be perfect, know that perfect doesn’t exist here. It’s never going to be 100% done, and that doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong.

Yes, it takes a little longer (and it’s worth it)

I’m not going to sugarcoat this: capturing as you go takes longer in the moment. But it gives you the single most accurate version of that process you’ll ever get, and it saves you so much time and frustration later. You do it once, for real, while you’re in it, instead of half doing it five different times from memory and never quite trusting any of them.

I’m living this one right now. I’m in the middle of a live launch for a client, and we’ve been moving so fast, pivoting based on the data as it comes in, that I haven’t been following my own advice. I’m already sitting here knowing I’ll have to go back and double-check everything. The good news is it’s a two-week launch, so next week I’ll capture as I go instead of rebuilding it all from scratch later, because I know from scratch would take me way longer.

Who this is really for: future you

If you have a team, you probably already know why you need your processes out of your head. But if it’s just you, it’s easy to think you don’t need this yet.

This is the part I really want solo business owners to hear: you’re not doing this so you can hand everything off to some big team you don’t have. You’re doing it, first and foremost, for future you.

Imagine it’s three months from now. You’re slammed, or sick, or having one of those weeks where your brain just isn’t cooperating. You need to do that task you set up back in the spring, the one you have to re-figure out from scratch every single time. Except this time, you don’t have to rack your brain at all. You pull up the process you captured, and it walks you through it from A to Z.

Capturing your processes is a gift you hand future you, so the next time life gets busy, you step away, or you simply forget how something works, you’re not starting over. You’re picking up something that’s already there waiting for you. And that alone makes it worth it, even if you never hand a single task to another human being.

Once it’s captured, it can go anywhere

Once a process is out of your head, it can go to a person when you’re ready to bring on help, or it can go to a tool. And here’s the part I’m most excited about, because it lives right in my world: that messy, rambly voice memo or screen recording doesn’t have to stay messy.

You can take the transcript, hand it to Claude (one of my favorite AI assistants right now), and ask it to turn your notes into a clean step-by-step process. You don’t have to be organized in the moment you capture. You just have to capture, and the cleanup is the easy part now.

Your one step this week

Your action step is small on purpose. Pick one task you do regularly, and the next time you do it, capture it as you go, with a voice memo, a screen recording, or a quick note, whichever feels easiest for that task.

Please don’t try to document your entire business this week. That’s a recipe for frustration. Pick one task and let it feel almost effortless.

Every task you capture is one less thing living only inside your head, and one less thing that yanks you back in every time you try to step away. Little by little, that’s how you build a business that runs without you living inside every single piece of it.

Why this matters so much to me

I’ve been in crunch mode for clients plenty of times, and I care a lot about making sure my clients know exactly what’s going on, that there’s documentation, and that someone could handle things if I stepped away. If a client’s business comes to a halt the moment I’m gone, that’s not real support.

But I’ve also been the one waking up at 2 a.m. wondering, Did I do that? Did I miss a step? Is everything done that’s supposed to be? I’ve even had bad dreams about work going wrong, only to wake up in a panic. When you keep everything inside your head, it tends to come out in some pretty interesting ways. I don’t want that for you, and I don’t want it for me either.

If you’ve been following along with this series, the next episode pulls every piece we’ve covered together into one simple picture you can actually hold onto and use.