Peace Of Mind

"If you want peace, stop fighting. If you want peace of mind, stop fighting with your thoughts." — Peter McWilliams

I woke up this morning with a full mind.
That's not a good thing for me... or you.

My mind is obsessed with things it might forget. And this obsession borders on frantic if those things keep swimming around with no safe place to land. I can't just write them down. My mind remains inconsolable without a persistence mechanism it trusts... one that continues to pester me as my mind does at this very moment.

I used to write lists of these things, but I find lists keep growing while I leave undone most of what resides there. Looking back, I can't believe I didn't come to terms with this sooner. The obvious is difficult to see when one rarely stops to look around. And I have been looking around quite a bit lately.

Now that I am about to enter the fold of fast and furious once more (announcement coming soon), my mind is losing its shit. It knows I will fall back to my chaotic ways. Some part of me craves riding that big wave of chaos to shore. He is an adrenaline junkie who can't get enough, and I must say, he is amazing under pressure. But what I need this time around is steady, efficient progress in a direction.

How?

The first part is about taking what I use at work and putting it to good use everywhere else in my life. It is a lean/agile approach to tracking things of value with just a few components:

• A wall board of tasks
• A related set of initiatives
• A related set of meaningful areas

The second part is from my work over the last two years as a struggling creator. Prioritization doesn't work well until it is tied to meaning, so I developed a compatible system for filtering priorities:

1. Is it meaningful?
2. Can it be automated?
3. Can it be delegated?
4. Is now the right time?
5. Will it have the biggest impact?

You have no doubt seen something similar. My take introduces meaning and Keller's The ONE Thing... followed by a level of clarity I was lacking.

The third part is scheduling anything of importance on a calendar. I learned the hard way how everything else in life will crowd out what is meaningful if I don't make time for it. This special time is commonly referred to as "sacred hours," and that's how I treat it on the calendar. Barring a five alarm fire, nothing is allowed to disrupt this time.

I must now fully commit to this three-part system. The adrenaline junkie will play in the wake of those little surprises Life throws my way while my mind achieves some level of peace.

Food for Thought

How do you get important TODOs out of your head?

How do you prioritize what matters most in life?

Do you make time for these things?

Or do you allow them to be crowded out by the static of life?

One Small Step

The system you need will differ from mine, even if in barely perceptible ways. The trick lies in integrating little bits of what works for others. And you don't do this overnight. It requires one small experiment after the other.