You know how it feels stressful to walk into your kitchen and see dishes piled up? It’s similarly stressful to be living inside a head that’s cluttered with anxious or stressful thoughts. Our thoughts can become just as disorganized as our physical space, and just like tidying up our house can help us feel relieved, learning how to organize our thoughts can provide a similar respite. Here’s a quick 7-step process to tidy up your mind.

How to Organize Cluttered Thoughts

Step 1: Identify What You’re Thinking

Some people immediately know what they’re thinking because they’re bombarded by a running commentary of stressful, self-critical, or anxious thoughts all day. Others are in such a habit of ignoring those thoughts that they’ve lost touch with them…the thoughts are still there, causing problems, but they’re hidden (kinda like that closet you just keep shoving stuff in and are afraid to open because it’ll all fall out at once).

Identify what you’re thinking with one of these strategies:

• Create some quiet space by breathing, doing a quick meditation exercise, or going for a walk (preferably in a green space).
• Talk it out — to yourself, to a friend, to a therapist. Speaking our thoughts aloud helps us articulate them and hear them in a different way than when they’re just floating in our heads.
• Journal. Here are some journal prompts to get organized with your thoughts:

Next, do a brain dump on paper. Dump out everything you’re thinking, in the messiest way possible….no complete sentences, no organization, just a pile of garbage coming out of your head.

The objective here is to openly confront the mess you’re dealing with. It’s opening that closet and looking at the mess that’s in there.

Step 2: Organize Your Thoughts into Categories

Next, take your brain dump and sort through it. If this were a closet you’re organizing, you’d drag everything out and put it into piles: Donate, throw away, put in a different room, put back in the closet. As you look at your brain dump, see if you can identify some categories or themes in the types of things you see. Your categories might be personal concerns, questions, things to research, to-do list items, goals, work concerns, recent successes, etc.

Step 3: Identify Action Items

Now that your thoughts are organized into categories, sort the items in each category into action items and non-action items. Action items are things you can actively do — chores, tasks, etc. Non-action items are things you can’t actively do but things you might want to think about more — questions, worries, concerns, etc.

Step 4: Prioritize the Lists

Looking at your list of action items, prioritize the action items. Some will be more urgent or important than others, so sort them in order of priority. Same with the non-action items: Some questions, worries, or concerns will be more urgent or important to you than others…some may not even need to be addressed at all.

Step 5: Transfer Your Thoughts to Your Calendar

Grab your calendar and schedule the items on your lists. Choose a time to do your action items. And choose a time to think or journal more about your non-action items. If you skip this step, it’s sort of like you’ve just minimized a computer program…the thought is still hanging around in your mind, just like a minimized program is still running in the background even though you can’t see it. Actually scheduling time to complete the tasks is equivalent to fully closing the program and releasing the brainpower that’s been reserved for thinking about that item.

Step 6: Follow Your Schedule

Obviously, once the items are on your schedule, the intention is to follow through and address them. Complete the action items at the scheduled time. Consider the non-action items during the scheduled time. For decisions that need to be made, make sure you make a decision during that time rather than postponing, delaying, or trying to buy yourself even more time. For thoughts that are bothersome, try using these strategies to keep from running around in circles with anxious or self-critical thoughts:

Step 7: Keep Your Mind Tidy

Now that you’ve done a big spring cleaning of your stressful thoughts, it’s best to try to keep it tidy. A few minutes each day can make a world of difference in how cleansed you feel each day. Complete this 7-step process often – daily is best.

Bonus pro tip: Break the habit of multi-tasking. Multi-tasking seems like it’s a useful way to get more done in your life, but it just adds more clutter to your thoughts. Here’s a helpful article on how to break bad habits.

How to Stop Fearing the Worst

One common stressful thought that gets stuck in a lot of people’s minds is fearing the worst. All those “what if” thoughts pile up, and they’re hard to get rid of. Next week, we’ll work through some strategies to shift those thoughts. Don’t miss it.

Talk to you soon,

Dr. Finch

P.S.    Remember, this is education, not treatment.  Always consult with a psychologist or therapist about your mental health to determine what information and interventions are best for you.  See the disclaimer for more details.