You know what I do to become a more efficient person? I text myself. Like…a lot. Seriously. On my iPhone, I have a text message thread with myself that is so frequent that the only other ones that see more activity are my family group messages (both Reser and Mathis sides) and my thread with my wife. My conversation with “Brent Reser” is always near the top of my messages. Why and how do I use it so much? I will quickly explain five ways.

Ideas – Some people jot ideas that pop into their heads down on paper and many type it into the Notes app on their iPhone. I prefer to simply text them to myself. To me, text messaging is just more accessible and easy. Also, it is ingrained in my head that my best thoughts are located in my personal text thread to myself. Additionally, when you send yourself a text, it pops up in the top bar of your screen. Thus, after you have thought about it and typed it, you then get to see it. Terrific reinforcement.

Preview Texts I Am Sending to Others – You know on Microsoft Word how you can hit “Print Preview” and see what your document will look like once you print it? Well, sometimes I like to see how my texts will look once I send them. To do this, I text myself. I will draft a text I am sending someone else in my own personal thread. I will send it to myself to see how it looks. I will proofread it, examine what the structure looks like, and check off that the emoticons look okay. I will then copy it and paste it into the composition box of the person I am texting with and tap send. Sometimes you can’t afford to mess up a text and this is a great way of preventing that.

Ready To Go Captions – At work, I have the privilege of covering a lot of big events live. When I stream or post from these events, I can’t afford to take the time to type out a description or caption on spot. Rather, before the event I will type out the captions I will be using and email them to myself. I will then copy that text off my iphone and send it to myself. Then, when I am on location, I will go to my text message thread and copy it and paste it into Facebook, Periscope, etc. It is easy and I never have to worry about making an error.

Quotes – I text and tweet out my infamous Life’s little Instruction quote the second I get up each morning. It goes to my Twitter account and to a few other people. I can’t afford for my early morning fatigue to make me stumble and send something out with a spelling or grammar error. So, each night before I go to bed I send the quote to myself, making sure it is perfect. Then, when I awake at 5 a.m., I simply copy it from my own personal thread and send it out.

Grocery Lists and To-Do Lists – While the Notes app is also popular to compile lists, I turn to my text message thread with myself to draft these important reminders. If I am going to the store, I text myself everything I need. If I am packing for a trip, I am creating a list of things to pack via text as well. I like doing it this way because it is also just so easy to add on. If I needed to add milk to my grocery list it is just so much easier to text myself as opposed to opening up the Notes feature, selecting the specific note I want, and then typing away.

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Perhaps if you don’t text yourself currently, maybe you will start. However, if you do text yourself, are you doing it for any reasons different from what I mentioned. I would like to know. Don’t Blink.