Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Tips to Eliminate Brain Clutter

Ever try and concentrate on something but your brain just doesn't seem to want to cooperate?  Welcome to Brain Clutter.   I've always had this problem, mostly because I have so many interests and ideas always popping into my head.   I am often told that I 'Think too much.' 
Honestly it's not something I can control, I do think a lot, and when I can't figure something out it gets worse I end up not being able to stop thinking about it until I do.... but is it good?

I'm not sure... I mean on one hand if you think too much eventually you have to make a decision or lose opportunities, on the other hand if you don't think about it at all and just jump in blind you may end up in a worse situation.  So I guess the key is balance.  I recently did some research on the topic and found some helpful tips for 'Decluttering' the brain.

1. Write it down. If you have a bunch of things on your mind, it helps to get them on paper and off your mind. ( This is useful, which is partly why I created this blog, I am horrible at keeping a journal, so I feel blogging when I have something to say is a lot easier and more rewarding when I get contacted that other people feel the same. After all a journal can't email you thoughts... yet. )

2. Identify the essential.  Figure out what needs to be done now and what can wait and focus on the 'Now' rather than trying to figure everything out at the same time.  ( I have been working on this, I think a talk with my dad about this helped, he had mentioned once that instead of trying to tackle one big problem, chip away at it by trying to solve small parts of it... makes sense.)

3. Eliminate. Now that you’ve identified the essential, you can identify what’s not essential. What things in your life are not truly necessary or important to you? ( This is also interesting because I've discovered that we all have 'Wants' but most times I think we 'Want-to-want' in other words and for an example, you may want to go fishing, or you see other people do it and it looks interesting, so you go out and buy fishing tackle only to discover a year later you never went fishing...because you don't really want to, you just thought you did.   By eliminating 'pipe dreams' you can focus on what you really want and then put all of yourself into it, rather than trying to do many things at the same time.)

4. Rethink your sleep. Sometimes we aren’t getting enough sleep, or our sleeping patterns aren’t ideal. ( Again with the sleep!   I've tried changing my sleep cycle...but it's useless, I am a night owl, all my thoughts and creativity seem to appear at night no matter what, so what I decided was to get the most quality sleep instead of longer amounts of time sleeping.  Hopefully that helps. )

5. Take a walk. Getting outside and doing some kind of physical activity is a great way to get stuff off your mind. ( This I need to do more often, I used to do it a lot. )

6. De clutter your surroundings. Cleaning up your house or organizing it will go a long ways towards helping your brain function well.

So there we have it, a good list, let's see how it works!