30 Days to a More Organized Life, Day 11: Empty Your Brain
Remember those index cards you picked up on the office supply run? Today is the day to use them. Find a block of time on your calendar and put everything away at your newly-organized desk: It’s time to empty your brain.
What’s on your mind. What projects are you working on? What responsibilities do you have? When something comes into your mind, write it on an index card. (One thought per card) Normally, the things that cause you stress are the first to come to mind. Lose weight might be one, or perhaps pay late bills is what’s nagging at you. Write each one on an index card. After the most stressful things get out of your head, the more mundane items like budget, inventory requests, anniversary trip, or fix sink will come to you.
One at a time, write each thought on a separate index card and put it in a pile. Get every single thing you’ve been trying to keep track of in your head, for all of your life, out. All of it. When you run out of thoughts, look at the following list to see if you can trigger any other things that might be hiding in your mind.
- Things to fix
- Things to buy or rent
- Goals and dreams
- Responsibilities to your family
- Responsibilities to your job
- Bills to pay
- Debts owed
- Places to visit
- Big life decisions
- People to contact
- Reports to write
When you’re done, there should be nothing on your mind that isn’t represented by one of the index cards. An (very short) example pile of index cards might look something like this:
- Electricity bill
- Meeting presentation
- Wedding thank-you notes
- DVD drive on computer broken
- Overdue library books
- Richard and tickets
- Student loan
- Quarterly report for boss
- Weight loss
- Meeting with team
- Emails
- Go back to school
It may be a small pile, it may be a large pile, but the important thing is it’s all there.
If you’ve been able to get everything out of your head, you will feel more relaxed. Defining how much work you have and what problems you face helps relieve stress. When you feel absolutely drained, put the cards away. We’ll deal with them tomorrow. But keep that pocket notebook on you all day. If anything else comes into your mind about your life (and it will) jot it down in the notebook.
Tomorrow, we organize everything in your life.
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Header photograph by: dierk schaefer
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Another way to organize work is to do this sort of to-do online. have you tried that out? I have used Deskaway for my work, that was pretty useful.
Love the concept and totally agree that the stress is caused not by having too much to do, but by not being aware enough of what you have on your list and worrying that you will drop the ball on something. Getting it on paper is a great way to reduce the stress factor.