4 Steps to Clear Your Mind, Stay Organized, and Supercharge Your Productivity

Do you want to simplify, yet amplify your productivity?

Does anyone say, ‘no’ to a question like that? Of course not, we are all looking for ways to improve our productivity. But how does one become more efficient or intentional with their time? That question has created an entire industry for time-management, productivity management, and better working habits. I have found that all those need to work together to maximize one’s productivity.

There are four steps I believe are cornerstones to building positive productivity processes that will lead to more effective use of your time and energy. 

Capture

Everyone needs a method to capture all the ideas, to-dos, and thoughts they have bouncing into and out of their conscious mind. Many studies show that our brains are not good at maintaining this information for long periods, and that it actually takes brain processing power away from other things when we try. The act of capturing should be unfiltered; write down everything you have on your mind. Capture them when ideas strike, as well as establishing a specific period each week to record your thoughts, ideas, and activities you want to complete, follow up on, or research further.

How you capture is up to you, but define the inbox or boxes where you will make your notes. This could be on your phone, in a notebook, or even on post-it notes. How you capture is less important than ensuring you have a method of capturing what is in your mind.

I have always found that when I complete my “brain dump” sessions, I feel a sense of relief and more energy to put towards doing something with those notes.

Organize

Once you have captured your thoughts, you will need to organize, filter, adjust, update, or delete them from your list. This does not have to be done at the same time you capture the thoughts. I would recommend that these are two separate sessions you plan for yourself. One to capture and another, at a later time, to work through all the raw thoughts you captured. In doing so, you allow yourself to be free in capturing and then bring a different mindset to the organizing step.

Organizing is really about filtering. Do these ideas make sense? Are they actionable? What do I hope to get out of these? Realize that some of your ideas may seem like far away dreams, and that is OK. Not everything has to be possible right now, next week, or even this year. I capture things like future trips I might like to take. Some of those may be five or ten years from now. However, I know I have it captured and can refer to it whenever I need to.

It will be important for you to have a system where you bucket your ideas. In David Allen’s Getting Things Done, he outlines the importance of this system to allow you to navigate easily through your ideas in the future and as part of your regular review cycles. For example, the trip I mentioned above is in a bucket called, “someday/maybe.” That is my place for keeping ideas I don’t want to forget, but do not have a specific time frame for when I plan to complete it. As part of my review system, I see that item once per quarter to check whether I need to take action now or if it will continue to wait.

Schedule

When it is time to take action on one of your captured ideas, you want to schedule it. This adds a third session for your week, and it is equally essential: planning. Scheduling your week is one of the best ways to ensure you are efficient with your time. You have your organized list, and you have your calendar, now schedule when you plan to accomplish those items.

While scheduling will probably be a different time from your organization step, they can work hand in hand. It also works together with your review process. While scheduling your time and activities, you have the opportunity to filter, update, or delete items you have either already taken action on or are no longer relevant. Scheduling is also the chance to look ahead and anticipate where bottlenecks of time may occur and what you need to get ahead of now, versus later.

Act

The final step in supercharging your productivity is taking the action required to complete the task you have assigned yourself. Capturing, organizing, and scheduling all lead to this step of actually accomplishing what you wanted to in the first place. If you still struggle to get to this point or achieve what you wanted, review the first three steps to see if there is a breakdown there that can help set you up for more success in your action set.

We may think that all these are tasks that need to be completed, but this is also an excellent way to ensure we have time for ourselves and fun. Using my trip example from above, at some point I will schedule that trip, and the time will come to take it. Because I have planned everything around it, looked at my other captured ideas and tasks, organized them, and scheduled time for them, I will be able to enjoy that trip.

You can quickly implement this framework to help set yourself up for a more productive you, but do not lull yourself into thinking it is easy to do. Each of these steps needs to be deliberate, practiced, and worked until they become a habit and part of your routine. Once you establish that level, you will find you have more energy, a clearer mind, and are accomplishing more with the time you have.

How will you implement capture, organize, schedule, and act into your life?

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Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash