3 Keys Thursday: The Value of an Empty Head

 I'm finishing up the second week of a new semester and the to-do's are piling up faster than I can check them off my list. It's the norm, and I'll adjust, but it always takes more time than I think it will.

I keep a to-do list, but ideas pop into my head as the day goes on, often in places or at times where it’s hard to write them down. 

Carrying them around in my head is exhausting. Fortunately, having a few key strategies for wrangling these ever-emerging ideas can bring me the blissful relief of writing it all down and letting it go.

If it's quick, just do it. Unless you are on the way out the door, if it takes less time to do it than  it does to write it down, just get it over with already.

Keep a master list in one place. For me, it's my planner, which has a layout that has space to jot down three priorities for each day, with lots of lines beneath those top three for the tasks I hope to get to...soon. While it's frustrating to see a bunch of unchecked items at the end of the day, it's less frustrating than corralling a bunch of notes dropped here and there.

Record it. Within reach of your phone but nowhere near that master list? Record an email and send it to yourself, or designate a file on your phone (for me, it's the notes app) to collect all those ideas you get on the run.

Do I still have notepads within reach in several rooms of the house? Why, yes, I do. But, now I make it a habit to gather loose notes up each night and transfer their contents to my master list. Even when the list gets long, the sense of peace it gives me to have all of my to-dos in one place (instead of lurking on counters and desktops and popping up at every turn) makes up for it.

During this busy season -- or any season, for that matter -- there are things I can control and things I can't. I may not always be able to control how many items I get through in a day, but I can at least make it easier to figure out what comes next and which task to tackle if a spare minute should arise. 

And, when it comes to lists, the only thing that's better than emptying my head onto the page is checking things off after I complete them.