Good evening. Good evening. It’s Thursday. 144. Something feels kind of good about that number.
Today I want to talk about something that’s come up three times today with clients and also with myself in the coaching process, and that is the power of a brain dump. Yep. And I’m not being rude. So what do I mean by that? Well, the other day I talked about how sometimes we can indulge in overwhelm, and the idea is get yourself out of overwhelm if you want to achieve anything. If you are stuck in overwhelm and going, “Oh my God, I’ve got so much to do,” it can really paralyze you. So that’s not what I want for you guys.
When I suggest to someone that they have a brain dump and just get everything out of their mind of what they need to get done, this is what I mean. You may have seen, I posted a photo on Instagram, I think a while back, about a brain dump I was doing. I tend do it in a couple of different methods. I’ll run through them and you could choose what would you think would work for you, because some of them might not work for you.
Some people might like sitting at their laptop and just getting an Excel sheet and doing different columns as a way to do it: personal, business, job, children, any kind of the categories in your life, household, et cetera. And then what you’ve just got to go is to go [inaudible 00:01:35], and all the things that are clogging up your mind about what you need to do in that particular instance.
At the moment, for example, I’ve got a little pond-y thing, technical term, at the front of my house, and it looks really manky. “It needs a clean, I need to get a filter put in there. I’m thinking about it all the time and not actually doing anything about it. So on my household sheet, one of the first things that I’ve put in there is, organize plumber for the pond. Not that hard, right? Not that hard. So that’s what you can do it like that way, electronically.
Another way you can do it is, as I said before, I had the colored papers, one bit of color for every area of my life. Another way you can do it is, I’ll just turn this around like this, big white boards like that. Or there are these fabulous things that you may have also seen, the giant Post-It Notes that just go [inaudible 00:02:39]. They’re fabulous too. Previously when I’ve done that, I’ve stuck them all around the house. [LED 00:02:45] thinks I’m a little bit of a nut job when I do that. So that’s part one of the process.
And what I suggest you do is either leave the paper out or the boards up, if you’ve got a whiteboard, do that or white wall, whatever. And if it’s a spreadsheet, save it and then I want you to come back to it in a couple of hours, in a day, because things might percolate and you’ll think of something different or you’ll go, “Oh, I don’t need to put that there. That was ridiculous.” And cross it off. So that’s step one.
Step two, which is one of the really important bits, is you can’t say … We’ll go the household list. Say you’ve just put 36 things on your household list. You can’t get 36 things done with relative ease in a timely fashion without going bonkers or having an army of people to do it for you. So what you need to do is prioritize. And the method I use for doing this is quite simple. Let’s go with booking a gardener or getting the pond fixed. Obviously, my house is causing me concern at the moment. I asked myself the question, “What’s more important to me at the moment: getting the garden done or getting the pond fixed?” Actually, the garden. So then my third thing on the list might be … I do need to get the washing machine serviced. What’s more important: getting the garden done, or booking the washing machine service? Given clothes at the moment are came out a bit dirtier than they went in, booking the washing machine service.
So I want you to just keep going through the list like that. Ask yourself your question. If you could get this done or this done, what’s more important? Move on to the next one, ask the same question, and you’ll go through that. And by the time you get to the bottom, you’re like, okay, the one I’ve got right at the end, that’s obviously numero uno importanto. So you just keep doing that process.
However, I would stop for the sake of not going absolutely bonkers because you’ve got too much on your to do list. I would stop when you get to the top five in every category. So if you’ve got your web redevelopment or a show that you’re doing or school projects or study, anything like that, if you’re trying to tackle more than five things, and you can go back and watch the live videos on the Do-It Diet, if you go onto the page and search Do-It Diet, you can look those up. If you try and tackle any more than five things, we’re back to overwhelm. And you don’t want to be on the overwhelm train, because you’re like chugga chugga chugga, chugga chugga chugga chugga choo choo, not get anything done. So keep it to five in each category maximum. Okay, so that’s step two done.
Again, you might want to revisit it. It might take you a little bit of time. Give yourself time and space to do this. I promise it is worth it. If you try and do it all in five minutes when the kids are screaming or you’re trying to watch TV at the same time, not going to work, not going to work. Okay? Remove yourself from other stuff going on and actually concentrate on getting this done.
So then, step number three, take out your trusty diary or your online calendar, whichever one you want to use. And what you want to do is take those top five to-dos in each of those categories, and you’re going to schedule them into your calendar to actually get them done. Now, I don’t mean at 8:00 AM putting, “house stuff.” I mean at 8:00 AM, “Call plumber,” with his number written next to it. Be really specific. The more specific you are with any of that diarization stuff, the more likely you are to be really respectful of the commitment you’ve set for yourself and get that stuff done. So diarize it, but be nuts and bolts in what you put in the diary.
And then get that shit done and get it all out of your head. Be proactive and you’ll come out of the end of the week going, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got so much done. Thanks, Sam.” You’ll send me messages, you’ll go, “Thanks, Sam.” She’s tops.
Have a great night and I hope that helps. Now I’m actually going to finish my brain dump that I need to do and I will talk to you all tomorrow night.