From the course: Time Management Fundamentals

Clearing your mind of its to-dos with mental triggers

From the course: Time Management Fundamentals

Clearing your mind of its to-dos with mental triggers

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- Having a clear mind sounds great but what if you've accumulated years of unresolved to-dos? you'll want to do an initial mind clearing using the mental triggers exercise file. These quick mental prompts will bring up unresolved tasks so you can move them out of your head and into approved gathering points. The process is simple. First, read one trigger on the list. Second, think for a moment about that trigger. Third, if any tasks come to mind, write them down and put them in an approved gathering point. Fourth, move to the next trigger and repeat. If nothing comes to mind when you read a trigger, that's fine, just move to the next item on the list. It's like mining for gold. As you go through the list, often nothing will come to mind but occasionally you'll hit a rich vein of unresolved tasks, a mental list, and you'll mine it for a while. Let's do a practice run together. Get your favorite gathering point ready such as a notepad. I'll read some random triggers for you to think about. Write any unresolved task down in your gathering point. Ready? Let's begin. Filing, gathering points, areas-to-organize, computers, phones, and apps. How many items did you write down? Now you've got an idea of how this process works. In the next week, schedule an hour to go through the full list. I recommend finding a partner to help you. Having someone else read the list aloud will help you stay focused. Perhaps find a couple of hours where you can go through the list for each other. And if that's not an option, you can still do this by yourself. This simple mind clearing activity leads to a feeling of relief. It's powerful, and it frees your mind to help you be at your very best.

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