Mastering Your Mind

“Rule your mind or it will rule you.”

- Horace

How many e-mails are in your in-box? How many are unread? After talking with a busy group of managers in Baltimore last week, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear numbers with four digits.

How long is your task list? Do you have any reminders that go unattended day after day? When I open my Outlook in the morning, I always get a little chuckle—as the reminder window pops up, all of the chimes that go off make it sound like I just won the jackpot on a slot machine.

This is a problem.

To be most effective in our roles as managers and leaders, we’ve got to be able to deal with compound issues—defining problems, proposing solutions, assigning action officers, following up on time lines, aligning activities, building alliances—the list could go on and on. In order to handle this level of complexity and manage others’ productivity, we’ve got to be masters of our own productivity. And believe it or not, Enemy #1 is not the limited number of hours on the clock, but rather the limited space in your brain.

Yesterday, I was reminded by friend and fellow coach, Don Khouri, of the similarity between our brains and computers. He used David Allen’s analogy of psychic RAM (Random Access Memory), making the point that our ability to process ideas slows down when we have too many unattended issues on our mind. And in our complex situations, we can’t confidently act on something that we haven’t processed adequately.

Deciding that it was time to free up some much-needed psychic RAM, I took Don’s advice, and I hope that you’ll take some time to do the same:
- Jot down all of the things that are on your mind. Don’t judge the validity of each thing, just write it down. To completely clear out your mind, you might consider the roles that you play and the commitments you associate with each one, or you might jog your memory with a “Trigger” List like the one that you’ll find in Allen’s Getting Things Done.
- Review each item. If you feel any anxiety or grief over an item, ask yourself a few questions:
- Did I make a commitment to this? Is it appropriate to renegotiate the commitment?
- Is it actionable? If not, define it as an action step, or as a series of steps.
- How do I define the successful outcome of this task or project?
- If I were to take the next action on this item, what would someone see me doing?

Once you’ve gone through this exercise, you’ll have a clearer sense of what needs to be done, and you will have given attention to all areas of your life. But there are a few more “open loops” that you’ll want to close: those e-mails and task lists. I know it may take some time to organize, archive, and delete those messages and reassign or delete tasks, and I also know that the time will be a worthwhile investment in your future productivity and sanity.

Don’s advice is to close your e-mail each day with an empty in-box—all of the day’s messages filed neatly away in an appropriate folder or in a virtual waste basket. I don’t know if I’m there yet, but I know that I won’t go to sleep fearing what awaits me tomorrow.

Here’s to mastering your mind and getting things done...Cheers!