About nine months ago my husband and I moved from a house we had lived in almost fifteen years and even though we didn’t move far, we had a lot of accumulated “stuff” and it seemed like a lot of work.  I have been told that you can whittle down your belonging to the things that you really need by moving three times or having a fire. Since I was not interested in a fire, I thought I should judiciously make sure I didn’t take things along we didn’t need or use.  We managed to fit what was left in the new house, vowing of course, not to collect more “stuff” in the future.

I feel that way sometimes about my mind.  I often find it hard to focus on the important things in life because my mind gets cluttered with the messiness of daily living.  There are times when I would love to be more creative but my mind is filled “to do” lists, ideas yet to be developed, things to write, people to see, all kinds of things just float around in my head and make me kind of foggy and I can float through the days stepping over things in my mind that I can’t get to yet.

My answer to the problem is to do what I call a “mind dump”.  I will sit down in front of my computer and just write down everything I am thinking about.  All the ideas for articles, presentations and blogs, then the “to do’s” I never seem to add to my list, that list of names of people I want to visit with that keeps floating around in my mind with no particular place to land, the cards and notes I need to send and so on.  Then, if they are important enough, I incorporate them into my daily/weekly/monthly plan.

It feels great to have those things off my mind, even though they are not yet done, they are in the plan.  It is actually a little energizing.  This exercise can be done whenever you feel weighed down by your thoughts.  When you find yourself saying “oh I have to remember to…” that is a good time for a “mind dump”.