How do you Clear Mental Clutter?
Everyone that I speak to these days has a lot of balls in the air…. There is so much more to keep track of during these COVID times. Between work responsibilities, managing families and households and of course the added challenges that come with summer, our brains are working overtime to keep track of all that needs to be done. We are thinking of tasks faster than we can act on them. As a result, we’re getting buried in mental clutter. Just like physical clutter, we need to have a process to manage and clear mental clutter so nothing important slips through the cracks. Here’s this Professional Office Organizer’s approach for keeping track of what needs to get done.
1. Brain Dump: Much like when organizing the piles around you, we must first gather all the tasks in one place. The best way to do this is to do a brain dump. Take time over your morning coffee to collect all the random tasks floating around in your head. This especially beneficial so you don’t keep waking up at 3am because you remembered an important task that had been overlooked.
2. Put it All on Paper: For your brain dump to be effective, every task and thought related to your immediate or future personal and professional plans and goals should be included on your list. The objective is to quickly and easily clear out all the clutter that is rattling around in your head by capturing it all on your pad.
3. Sort/Purge: Identify categories like important tasks, future tasks, projects, etc. and group the related items together. Do tasks that will take minutes to complete as it will take longer to write them down. Delegate tasks that a member of your team or family can easily handle. This will leave you more time to address the work that only you can do. Delete tasks that just don’t need to be done.
4. Organize: Review your list from the perspective of when the tasks need to be completed. You may have important tasks with immediate deadlines, tasks related to future projects and those that are less urgent but nonetheless need to get done. Be sure to divide projects into a series of tasks so that you can schedule time in small frequent chunks to do the work. Regardless of where the tasks fall regarding priority, add them to your to-do list and block time on your calendar.
5. Do it Again: Even if we make best efforts to jot down all that we need or want to do, there will be days where we just don’t do this. Hence it is important to do periodic brain dumps. They are especially helpful if you have been focusing on a big project and everything else has been pushed side.
Don’t let the mental clutter overwhelm you. Schedule time to do brain dumps to clear mental clutter. Reach out to this NYC Professional Office Organizer today to learn more.