Tracktacular > Blog > Reducing Mental Clutter

Your mind is capable of processing a massive amount of information every day. But when it gets cluttered, you suffer from physical and mental consequences.

The most tangible side effect of a cluttered mind is stress. Stress is a physiological response that can subconsciously increases your blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. This exertion is detrimental to your health over a prolonged period of time.

There are many factors that affect the quality of your sleep, but your mental state is the only one that can follow you across bedrooms. People with restless minds tend to sleep less, which corresponds to fewer REM cycles at night. Shallow sleep prevents your body from repairing itself and impairs your creativity and mood, which leads back to stress in a negative feedback loop.

Your motivation stagnates when you are stressed and tired. When things you normally look forward to start to feel like a burden, it's time to take a step back and empty your head.

Clearing Your Mind

Your mind has limited amount of space to work with, so it stores critical information in long-term memory, and temporary information in short-term memory. The only way to keep things in short-term memory is to continually remind yourself that you want to. Not only is this inefficient and unreliable, it's stressful and detrimental to your health.

The easiest way to relieve the burden is to externalize the things you want to remember. It doesn't matter whether you use Tracktacular or a napkin, as soon as you store things outside of your brain you no longer need to remember them. This is especially effective for minor tasks and events.

It's easy to get overwhelmed and procrastinate when there's too much to do. But procrastination only provides temporary relief, and it's often overshadowed by a stalking sensation of guilt.

Instead of procrastinating, prioritize important tasks and schedule time for you to work on them. Be as specific as possible, so there's less chance of feeling overwhelmed later.

For example, if you need to get the oil changed in your car, don't create a task that says Get Oil Changed. A far more effective task is Schedule Oil Change Appointment. Both tasks aim to accomplish the same goal, but one seems difficult and vague and the other is immediately actionable. When you reduce your tasks to simple, ordered steps, there's no way for your mind to stress over them.

We are all creatures of habit, so use it to your advantage. A routine puts you on auto-pilot for a while, so you can relax and enjoy the ride.

For example, a five minute stretch routine in the morning can ease your mind into waking up gracefully. After you get in the habit, you'll feel better physically and mentally before you even get out of bed.

You don't need to script out your entire life to experience the benefits of a routine. Instead, try to identify your existing routines and find ways to make them more enjoyable or more efficient. If you're bored of brushing and flossing your teeth before bed, listen to the radio or a podcast while you do it. If you do the same tasks redundantly throughout the day, consolidate them into scheduled times. You can check your email every five minutes or twice per day, the end result will be the same.

Keeping the Clutter Away

You must remain diligent to keep your mind clear. You'll always have things to do, so get into the routine of externalizing and scheduling tasks as soon as you identify them. If you start to feel overwhelmed or notice yourself procrastinating, take a step back to clear our your head.

Try it!

Clear out your head. Create a Personal category in the Task Tracker, and externalize all the things on your mind into ordered, actionable tasks. Set target dates on your tasks to schedule reminders. Once you've got them out of your head, you can relax and stop worrying about them.

Blog

Reducing Mental Clutter

By Anthony DePalma on July 30, 2013

The Cluttered Mind

Clearing Your Mind

Keeping the Clutter Away

Try it!