Feel like you’re being tugged in a million different directions? Does your mind keep knocking you out of focus? You probably need to do a brain dump:
- Take a piece of paper
- Write down everything
By everything I mean everything that you “need to do”. Anything that pops into your head.
Like a lot of my list-making ideas, I originally got this from David Allen. I was shocked the first time I did it. You’ll be surprised at how many things are rattling around up in your noggin taking up mental energy and stressing you out. It’s quite easy for me to get to 100 without much struggle. Anything from “set up the sprinkler system” to “study more computer programming” to “think about my life purpose” is up there somewhere, and its creating a lot of background drag whether I know it or not.
Don’t try to systematize anything right now – that kind of thinking will just get in the way . . . just let it allll out. Later you can organize everything and start to make some to-do lists (or some not-to-do lists) but for now just write.
Heads up, I’ll be talking about my own to-do lists in the next post. But for now you can at least stop stressing out – get ready to be amazed at how many things were nagging at you, and how much better you feel after writing them all down.