Reducing Mental Effort – Part 3

Our series on reducing mental effort continues. Pre-process distractions What do you do when you’re distracted by emotions or other circular thoughts, and you can’t be very productive? Some people say to just push through and do your work anyway. I’ve tried this and found that it hasn’t worked well for me. I can work a bit, but if my mind keeps dwelling on something else, I’m certainly not working at full engagement. But nor do I like taking a full day just to deal with emotional processing. So here’s a good solution: Devote a modest amount of time to pre-process whatever is distracting you. You may not have time to resolve it fully, but you can process those thoughts and feelings well enough to prevent them from distracting you throughout your day. Grab three pieces of blank paper and a pen, and simply write out your thoughts and feelings as they come to you. Keep going until all three pages are full. Listen to whatever your mind wants to say, and flow it onto the page. This normally takes me about 45 minutes, so roughly 15 minutes per page. It’s fine to pause and think now and then, but try not to pause too long. Just keep emptying the contents of your mind onto the page till all three pages are full. You don’t have to solve anything. Again, you’re just emptying the contents of your mind onto the page. Let the parts of your mind that have been distracting you have their full say. Be absolutely can...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Productivity Source Type: blogs