Inputs. Here are some suggestions to temper your intake of information.
- Blocks. Put your media, internet, email consumption into blocks of time. Limit your exposure otherwise.
- Silence. Spend time in silence and learn to be comfortable with it and with your thoughts.
- Quiet time. Find a place where you can get away from human-generated sounds. If possible, spend time in nature.
- Manage distractions. During the times of day when you are most productive and capable of getting the most done, take steps to reduce interruptions and distractions of this time.
- Minimalism. Reduce the amount of things in your life, and the amount of stuff around you, to only that stuff which is essential to keeping you safe, happy, healthy, and content.
Outputs. Here are my suggestions to manage the problem of too many things on your mind.
- Write everything down. Get it out of your head, into one place you can see and manage.
- Prioritize. Don't feel like you need to have everything perfectly ranked. Just put things in an order that approximates some of the priority. If pressed, do a 1 (now), 2 (later), 3 (sometime later) ranking to organize.
- Accept limits. Recognize what is in the limits of stuff you are physically able to do. What is not in those limits, either find a way to do or set aside for sometime later.
- Eliminate. Everything on your list is something that your subconscious has flagged for action. Can some of this be eliminated without doing anything further?
- Reserve list. Create a list to which you can return in the future. Everything that you will do "sometime later", put on the Reserve List. This way you've captured the thought, but you don't need to pursue it right now.
- Scheduling. Schedule some items onto your calendar. Once you put some items on your calendar, do your best to get them done when you scheduled.
- The Two Minute Rule. Everything that takes less than two minutes to do, do it as soon as possible.
- Sort. Everything else, sort between work and home tasks, and work your way through these when you are able. If possible, try to concentrate work into blocks and get as many done as possible.
- Writing. Some of what you wrote down may be stuff that needs further thinking. Use these items as writing prompts. How do you feel about them? Why are you thinking about them? What can you do about them? What do you want to do about them?
Further reading: "Getting Things Done" (also known as "GTD") by David Allen may provide some additional detail in thinking though some of these processing suggestions.
Here's a system of steps to take to clear up thinking that I wrote down long ago, I think inspired by GTD:
- Enumerate questions to resolve.
- Imagine options to resolve these questions, including fantastic/unrealistic ones.
- Choose a route of action and follow it.
- Allocate some time each day to imagine and plan steps towards these questions.
There's probably not time to apply these steps to everything on your mind, but if you've got something big looming, this is one exercise that can help work through what to do.
In the end, please remember that your attention and your time are precious commodities. If you consciously choose how to spend them, you will face the world knowing that you are acting from your own will, rather than simply reacting from crisis to crisis.
You are an agent, in the sense of the word that "agent" means someone who acts out of their own will.
You are an agent, in the sense of the word that "agent" means someone who acts out of their own will.
- You act, you take action in the world.
- You can set up automatic and pre-directed actions to free up yourself to focus on what's important.
- When you automate parts of your life, you don't need to automate everything. Keeping some decisions reinforces your perception as someone in control of your life.
- When you hit barriers, flow like water: change your direction, keep on moving, move to other tasks, keep going.
