How to find clarity in chaos

Despite priding myself on being someone who thinks in systems and efficiency, I often find myself facing an ever growing list of projects to work on.

I always tell myself I’ll get organized and work through everything, but new ideas come up halfway through, and I end up with a bigger list than when I started.

That, or things end up not going according to plan—like what happened last week.

I planned to take some days off from work and prioritize myself. My goal was to clear my mind, assess my progress for the year and re-align myself for the second half of the year.

I thought it was perfect timing, given that we’re almost half way through the year.

Unfortunately, life had other plans.

I received an early call letting me know that my aunt had passed away and long story short, my days off were anything but relaxing.

I’ve arrived at many life lessons after reflecting so much for the past week, but the biggest one I want to share with you today is this: Life will never slow down.

Life is happening right now, the best time to start that project or business idea you keep putting off is now.

But! You can’t take effective actions if your mind is cluttered and foggy, so here are 3 methods you can use to center yourself and clear your mind:

• Dump all your tasks into a list or table: Unloading every open loop from your brain onto paper (or a note) is one of the best ways to reduce overwhelm. This concept comes from the Book Getting Things Done by David Allen. Your brain is not meant to store information, it’s designed to process and think. So give it the space to do just that.
• Change your environment: It’s been shown that exposing yourself to new environments stimulate creativity. Whether it’s going for a walk or working anywhere outside your usual setting can stimulate new creative solutions. Have you ever had a situation where you’re stuck on a problem hours on end but then you go to the gym and the answer suddenly comes in the middle of your workout? That’s why. This reminds me of something one of my Engineering Professors use to say: “The answers you seek hide away from your desk”. Man was he right.
• Remove all external stimuli: When’s the last time you sat in silence for 30 minutes? No phone, no music, just you and the sound of your thoughts. You probably don’t notice how much work your brain puts in just to process your environment. Find a quiet place where no one can find you and give yourself some space to think.

Your brain is incredibly powerful, but it can’t shine if it’s cluttered by useless crap.