Mental Decluttering: How to Clear Your Mind and Focus on What Matters
Living with less is can be a struggle, but like we discussed last time out...it actually helps us more than we think it will. In episode 48 of my podcast, I also discuss a little more on the topic...but for this week, let's dive into mental decluttering.
The Overloaded Mind: Why We Struggle with Mental Clutter
Let's look at the problem with mental clutter first. Have you ever chatted to someone on the phone while scrolling through social media? If not, you are lying, but anyway. If you have (like me) and the person on the other side (usually my wife) says 'I can here you aren't focusing', you feel pretty bad. I think it's because modern life bombards us with information, choices, and distractions the whole time. We are glorifying multitasking (more on that now) and we think that overloading our minds is somehow a superpower. What an odd superhero that would be:
Single-Tasking: Cutting Through the Noise
So now that we know what the problem is, and that multitasking is a myth, let's look at some solutions I implemented in my own life. For starters: Single-tasking (still finding out if I can trademark this)! Before we go on, however, I need to state that this is the single most difficult thing for me to shake.
Here's what it means: focus on one thing at a time and only go to the next once you are done. This means cooking and listening to music (not a podcast), and not while reading an article while listening to a podcast while cooking and 'spending time' with your wife. It's hard, I love learning while I run, or posting while I chat on the phone...but what is does, is weakens my ability to do either one really good. When I run, I either listen to Craig, or focus on my stride...definitely not BOTH. I am not saying to not ever do this, just multitask less, because if it's the norm, I am confident you won't manage to have live a mentally decluttered life.
Decluttering Your Mental Space.
For this entire section I am going to paraphrase a guy I follow called Colby Kultgen (https://percentbetter.com/) where I found this cool tool to declutter your mind.
In this post he suggests to take a piece of paper, divide it into 4 pieces and write down your To Do's, Decisions, Ideas and Letting Go (you can go and read it on Instagram). What he get's to is essentially just taking a few minutes to create mental "storage space" for what truly matters. You write down everything that's going on in the noggin everyday...even if it's only 2 sentences and takes 2 minutes.
I promise this is a great habit that really just sets up your mind to have more room for cool stuff!
Digital Detox
Freeing your mind from information overload is hard, because scrolling is fun, and it pumps that fun oil into your brain that makes you feel happy. BUT, it's not good for you in the long run, especially if you want to be productive and have big dreams and goals (we will dive into dreaming later on though). Reducing screen time is an overused statement for the ages, but it's something we perhaps willfully ignore. Why should we choose the hard way out when judging a dude for not making a 10m dive from the comfort of our couches is just way better?
Whichever way you think about it, too much phone use is bad and if we really want to get a grip on this and aid in the decluttering of our minds...here's what I would suggest (preaching to myself here, too).
Set healthy boundaries with social media and notifications and curate your digital environment. In other words taking away the PING and the annoying red dot is one of the best things you can do for your mind, other than intentionally not using your phone for 30 minutes from waking up and before bed. The algorithm is a bitch sometimes (well, all the time), so it will always try to feed you the bad stuff. The solution: 'like' and follow more positive people and content, dislike or hide things you don't want to see and lastly, put the damn phone down when you start to realise the frequency of the crappy content is increasing.
Mindfulness and Stillness
Pause. I have definitely mentioned this somewhere. But the best thing for a racing mind is to stop, SAY the word 'Pause' and actually just take a breath. It not only physically resets you, but it mentally wipes the board clean in your head, allowing you to regain focus or direction. We use pause moments in our house like it's no one's business and the more hectic a season is, the more we pause. Bonus, pause moments help you to be PRESENT, a delicacy in the modern age.
Whether this made sense or not, I hope the post at least got you thinking: "Am I storing stuff in my brain that's making me slower than a Windows 98 computer?" If so, reset and upgrade. We have all the tools in the world at our disposal to declutter and refresh, the trick is to pick something and just start.
Happy cleaning!
TF
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