Clearing mental clutter is something I have struggled with my entire life. In the past, I would feel like, no matter what, I constantly had some version of mental clutter. I always had something going on in my mind. If it wasn’t something new causing that anxious, overwhelming feeling, it was something from my past distracting me.
Nowadays, most of us have somewhere to be every day and people who depend on us to show up; it can start to feel overwhelming, leaking into your mind creating unnecessary noise.
These noises can form unwanted voices repeatedly reminding you, at all hours of the day, even 3am!, about all these tasks and projects you have to complete; that your daughter has a soccer match this weekend; your boss wants that report on his desk by 5pm Friday; the dogs need walking; what is for dinner next week; the list is endless.
You know what I am talking about!
After many years of unfinished projects, days wasted doing nothing in particular and living a life I was not proud of, I decided I could no longer deal with this chaotic mental clutter and needed to find solutions on decluttering my mind.
After fixing several significant parts of my life, I was able to cut through the mental clutter. I found focusing on my mind-body connection created a happier me. I learned to beat stress, depression, anxiety, and more just by eating, sleeping and living well.
In this article, I explain 6 tips I use to stay mentally strong when life gets overwhelmingly busy. I highly suggest you try these tips to help you declutter your mind when life turns the heat up a notch — especially focusing on keeping fit and eating a balanced diet.
Keeping fit and fueling the body with nutritious foods is essential because of the connection between our mind and body, it has profound implications on your mental and emotional well-being.
What Is Mental Clutter?
Mental clutter is anything that keeps you from thinking straight — multitasking, over-stimulation, and saying yes to too many events or projects.
Why You Need To Clear Your Mental Clutter
Mental clutter slows down your productivity; you become filled with anxiety that your to-do list is too big, and you could not possibly get it all done or fit it all in. Your mind starts to tell you stories about your never-ending to-do list, so you end up not doing it at all.
The floors stay dirty, the piles of washing continue to grow, and you decide to buy more clothes to compensate. You don’t get around to spring cleaning the garage, so it becomes the place where tools and unwanted items go never to be found again.
You order take out several times a week and waste your hard-earned money and fuel your body with junk food instead of nutritionally dense brain food.
The only way to get rid of the mental clutter is to identify what the mental clutter is and start to sort through it and put it in neat, manageable piles.
Clearing any mental clutter you have welcomes peace and calm back into your life. Without unnecessary mental clutter, you will become more productive, happier and all-round healthier.
Here are 7 practical tips that will improve all areas of your life and help clear mental clutter.
- Make lists; meet your second brain
- Use a daily planner aka your personal assistant
- Learn to prioritise
- Clean up your physical clutter
- Minimise screen time
- Create Daily Routines
- Say no more often
Make lists; meet your second brain
The brain is a fantastic planner but not the best tracker, so you cannot rely on your memory to keep track of your to-do list or all the information you are taking in daily.
Therefore, an organised and functional to-do list, brain dumping process and a daily planner are essential tools for clearing out space in your mind. Preventing you from forgetting all your ideas and allowing you to take stock of what is a priority right now.
When you rely on your brain to keep track of all your tasks, projects, grocery list, your mind becomes overwhelmed very quickly.
Lists consolidate scattered thoughts and tasks so you can sort out what your priorities are; freeing up space to concentrate on the tasks that matter to you. Try to tackle the critical tasks first. Critical tasks could be the tasks you least want to do so they are no longer taking up space in your mind.
I use TuexDuex for all my to-do lists, brain dump, someday tasks list etc. I love how simple it is, you have a full view of each day in a column format and can see all your lists right there, you don’t have to keep clicking other tabs to find them.
I have tried using other apps, but they all use pages so I would forget about the other lists most the time. I am a very visual person, so being able to see what needed to complete each day, task by task, and having my brain dump on the dashboard helped me complete more tasks.
As I am a forgetful person having a master list with all my future projects and current daily routine, nighttime routine, and main priorities, is a lifesaver.
For my grocery list and shopping list, I use AnyList. You can invite family members to each list so they can add items when needed. I also use it for any other items I want in the future, including gym equipment, kitchen appliances, or clothing I need but don’t need straight away.
It’s convenient having the list right there on my phone, so when I do go to the shops, I can see if I need anything while I am out and about.
You also have a meal planner and a feature to record your recipes. Well worth looking into if you need somewhere to track your meal plan for the week and a master list of your favourite recipes.
My favourite feature is that they both have an app but also are compatible with your desktop. So you can access it at home, at work, wherever you are, and they are both under $30 a year!
Use a daily planner aka your personal assistant
Daily planners are a must! If you do not already have one, get one! Daily planners allow for accurate time-management and create a clear schedule for you to keep track of all your appointments, events and set time for self-care. If you do not grab that time for yourself, then someone or something else will.
I use Google Calendar as my daily planner. It’s a great tool for keeping track of all my appointments, events, birthdays, workdays, tasks and reminders. I use it every day to block time for self-care, my morning routine, night routine, days I am working, and block out time to focus on my blog.
Plus it is free! Like TuexDuex and AnyList, it has an app and has a desktop-friendly interface. Amazing!
Learn to prioritise
We all have multiple roles we play in our lives, so our priorities will change throughout the day. To increase productivity and focus, decide on your priorities and execute them for a specific duration of time. You could choose one high-priority task for the first hour, followed by 30 minutes of low-priority tasks such as checking emails or dropping off the post.
Clean up your physical clutter
Decluttering all your mental clutter can be meaningless if you’re surrounded by mess. It is no secret that our physical environment is strongly connected to our mental state. So it makes sense that any mess or clutter in your environment will act as a distraction and encourage procrastination.
Tidying up your physical space can significantly improve your mental clarity. Try decluttering your space by giving your possessions a permanent home, clear out all the clothes you no longer wear, choose a room and start ridding yourself of unwanted and unneeded items that are distracting you from your main priorities.
Not only will having a clutter-free space minimise the time you spend cleaning but also frees up all that mental space to complete all those unfinished projects. Not to mention the freeing feeling of when someone texts you to say they are just “dropping by” and you don’t have to rush around like a mad hatter to tidy up before they arrive.
I am a firm believer that your home is a portrait of how you view yourself, so it only makes sense that if your environment is cluttered and distracting, then so will your mind.
Minimise screen time
Want to fill your mind with useless noise and clutter fast? Spend more time watching TV or use your phone and mindlessly scroll through social media.
I used to do this before bed then waste 2 hours of precious sleeping and recovery time, not to mention, it is just a big waste of time. I didn’t search anything in particular, just scrolled through Instagram because it doesn’t require any thought process, neither does sleeping! Insert facepalm emoji. I know so many of you are guilty of this, it’s not only me.
I now set a limit to how much screen time I have on my phone around the time I go to bed. I use the ‘downtime’ setting option on my iPhone to schedule when I limit the access to all apps, except a few I have chosen to exempt. I like falling asleep to a Headspace podcast, so I have exempted it from any screen time limit. The schedule is set to switch on the limits at 10pm, I receive a reminder 5 minutes before, and at 4:50am; the limits switch off, and I have full access to all apps for the day.
Since making the simple decision to stop wasting time on social media or just spending time on my phone before going to bed, I have found that the quality of my sleep has dramatically improved. I no longer feel tired the next day from poor quality sleep.
Create daily routines
Creating clear daily routines means less decision making, less mental clutter throughout your day. The simple idea of having a morning and night routine can make all the difference to a cluttered life.
You know what time you are going to bed, what time you are waking up, what needs preparation before you go to bed, have all these decisions already decided. You only have to perform them instead of making unnecessary decisions causing decision fatigue and using valuable mental energy.
These decisions could be planning your day the night before using your daily planner, deciding what you are going to wear to work that week, meal planning all meals and preparing them in advance, have your workout clothing in your bathroom ready to go.
READ: How Will These 8 Daily Habits Make Your Life Simpler?
When you set yourself up, you take away that feeling of it being too hard and decrease the chances of you not performing the task. Even if you want to workout, you are less likely to follow through if you have to make other decisions first thing in the morning. Setting yourself up and avoiding unnecessary decision making applies to all tasks and goals.
Say no more often
Saying yes to everything can become overwhelming. You’ll be exhausted, stressed and irritable because you have filled your plate with events and projects you don’t want to do. It adds to your mental clutter, underminds your efforts to improving your quality of life, adds hours of worrying over how to get out of a commitment.
When you say yes to every event, every request for help, every project, you take away time from your family and your main priorities. You cannot give 100% of your energy to one task or project if you are taking on more then you have time to spend doing. You’ll eventually burnout.
Are you ready to clear your mental clutter?
I hope reading this post you found a few tips you can implement today to help clear mental clutter and start making changes for a more productive and balanced life.
Loving this new blog, it is really helping me to get back to what is important to myself and my soon to arrive baby.
I am so glad you are loving this post. Sometimes we forget that our mind needs care as well. With how overwhelming life can get it is essential to have clarity when making such big decisions, like organising life for a little human <3
Congratulations on bubby x