Clear your mind: mind fixation and mindless lists

One of the most effective ways to clear your mind is to extract from your head everything that constantly pops up in it randomly: your expectations, the things you need to do; things that need to be put in order, and somehow all this systematized. This article contains several methods of how to clear the mind of things and things that prevent concentrating .

Return to neutrality

When you go into the kitchen and see 50 plates in the sink, the desire to cook noticeably decreases. The same happens when you return to the computer, and you see a bunch of open tabs in the browser when you wake up, and are forced to do a lot of things before jogging, when you have to eliminate the debris on your desktop before you start working.
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Get to know the idea of ​​returning to neutrality. Returning to neutrality is a ritual in which "whenever you finish a job, you return everything to a neutral position." As Thanh Pham, author of the Asian Efficiency blog, writes, returning to a neutral environment, you noticeably reduce the risk of postponing the work that you intend to do. Returning the situation to a neutral state eliminates the need to perform a bunch of actions before starting work next time.

Pam also gives several other examples of how to get things back to a neutral state:

• Solve issues with family, friends and your partner.
• Prepare everything for the next morning after you finish your morning ritual.
• How should sleep at night to prepare for tomorrow.

What is the point: if you find yourself postponing things for later, perhaps the problem is not in your head, but that you are not returning the situation to a “neutral” state in order to be ready for the next time when you have to do the same action again. Clearing the space and bringing it to a neutral state is a great way to clear your mind and focus on your New Year's goals .

Make a “waiting list”

One of the important points in David Allen's Getting Things Done system is keeping a list of everything you are waiting for so that you don’t have to think about it while you are working. Probably, you already have a list of tasks that need to be done, because if it is not there, then you have to keep in your head a bunch of commitments that constantly pop up in your mind every day. And this is so tiring!
The "wait list" contains everything you expect at a particular point in time.

Are you waiting for an e-mail, letter, phone call, text message, voice mail reply, or even a package from eBay, when you put it on your waiting list, you can stop thinking about it and release valuable brain convolutions for thoughts of something something more useful.

And then (and this is very important!) You look through your list periodically during the week so that you don’t miss anything. When you scroll through the waiting list, you no longer need to think about it; when you work, the mind is freed from many things that you otherwise would have been constantly remembering.

A few tips on how to make your waiting list even more efficient:

1. Group items, for example: e-mail, Internet, text messages, calls and paper letters. Grouping items according to different criteria (location, for example, "home", "office", "summer house") significantly reduces the time it takes to process and organize the material in the list.

2. Track how long you are waiting for something. If a message or call is late, you can politely remind the person concerned, for example, so that he hurries with the answer.

The waiting list will make you infinitely more productive. Here are some more arguments:

• The wait list helps to focus. When adding items to the list after sending an e-mail or voice message becomes part of the daily routine, you will understand its value. You can be sure that everything is under your control when it is on the list (and you regularly look at it), and you can better concentrate on your activities at any given moment.
• Nothing will be missed. When you keep track of everything you are waiting for and regularly review the list, it’s almost impossible to miss something.
• People are very impressive when you are so well controlled.
• Updating the list does not require much time. This is a tiny price for the opportunity to get rid of excess mental load and stress.

Keeping a waiting list is one of the most effective ways to help clear the mind and focus on important goals.

Enter the “mind fixation” ritual

From time to time, when the author of the article has 15 minutes in silence, he turns off everything (including the computer and cell phone), sets the timer for 15 minutes, and lies down on the sofa with a notebook.

He discovers that the mind is still working at 10,000 revolutions per minute and churns out such things as: the things to be done (but not fixed in the list); what is expected; ideas for the project A Year of Productivity; long-term ideas / plans and more.

We often have a whole gallery of thoughts in our head that we don’t have a chance to look at. When you force yourself to step aside for 15 minutes with a notebook and a pen in your hands, there is nothing left in your head , except to defragment and organize, while the best of them begin to float to the surface.

This method also helps to adhere to goals, because all open questions that continually pop up in your head (what needs to be done, schedule and plan for the implementation of the goals) come to the surface.
Another similar ritual: walk around your home (or office) with a notebook and pen in your hand. Do not do anything, even small things; just record everything that needs to be done so that it is all written in one place and leaves your head.

Both methods help fix everything that needs to be done in one place. This not only helps to organize all things, but also to free your mind from all tasks, even the smallest.

The next time you have 15 free minutes (or even if you don’t), try to turn everything off and lie down or just walk with a notebook in your hand. You wonder how much you write down.

Create a "mindless" list

One of the experiments that the author did for his project A Year of Productivity is listening to 70 hours of TED talks during the week (an experiment on the ability to keep information in memory). During the experiment, he could easily perform mindless actions (cook, clean, work in the garden, train, etc.). Even when listening to podcasts, audiobooks and while talking on the phone, there is still a sufficient amount of free brain convolutions to perform any thoughtless and mechanical actions.

Researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found out that our brain is capable of processing 110 “bits” of information at a time, and a conversation (or listening to a TED talk / podcast / audiobook) takes 60 bits of our attention. This is good news, because even listening to the abstruse TED talk about dark matter, you still have the brain resource to do some things that do not require thinking.

It follows from the above that you can easily perform thoughtless actions while listening to something productive. This is where the idea of ​​a thoughtless list comes from. This list contains everything that does not require mental effort that needs to be done. These are things that:

• They require a lot of time, but little attention.
• When performing which do not need to think.
• Tasks in which you can rely on the power of habit.

To create a mindless list, just write down all the mindless things you need to do in one place. Follow your plans while listening to podcasts and other things! You can include the following in this list:

• Wash and fold laundry.
• Sweep the path in front of the house.
• Go rake in the yard.
• Wash and fold the dishes.
• Sweep the floors.
• Clear the driveway.
• Remove trash from your desktop.

Such actions practically do not require reflection, which means you can listen to something useful during such classes.

Thoughtless actions require little attention from you, but often a lot of time. And since it is advisable to rely on the power of habit when doing them, you can easily get important information from a TV, radio or cell phone at the same time.
Crossing out points from a thoughtless list, listening to something useful, is very pleasant, and allows you to do more in less time. Fixing mindless affairs (which can be done while doing something productive) is a great way to unload the brain in order to better focus on your goals.

Another great way to be productive with your mindless list: combine all the boring chores that you have to do throughout the week into one big time block in one day. This will leave you more time on the remaining days of the week for much more important things.

PS We recommend another article on the topic - 10 things that I learned about productivity, living in a hermit for 10 days .

Translated by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of MBA Consult .