Welcome back friends! This week I’m talking about something that I know we all have struggled with at one time or another, thought clutter.

But first, what is thought clutter?

Thought clutter is when your mind is filled with thoughts that don’t serve you and tend to make you feel overwhelmed or “all over the place”. Maybe you’re mentally compartmentalizing too many things and your brain is feeling like it is in overload mode. Thought clutter can slow you down when it comes to decision making and getting into action. 

Just like how you want to clean or declutter your house of physical clutter, you may find yourself needing or wanting to declutter your thoughts and how you are choosing to think. 

How do I know if I’m experiencing thought clutter?

You can tell if you have thought clutter by a few different ways.

1. If you find yourself not able to be present in the moment. Thought clutter keeps us stuck in our thoughts and makes it challenging to be in the present moment.
2. Scattered attention. It can make it difficult to stay focused because it can feel like you have thoughts flying around in your head.

How do I eliminate thought clutter?

Different ways you can go about reducing thought clutter and purge thought clutter:

• Limit input. Too much input can easily cause distractions, unregulated thoughts. Input can also zap your time. It can be so easy to get on Instagram for only 5 minutes to then go down a rabbit hole of clicks and find yourself 30 or 45 minutes later still on Instagram. Not only has it zapped your time but it could have provoked a thought chain. Limiting input looks like turning off the TV (or Hulu, Netflix), purging podcasts you don’t listen to any more, deciding to only listen to an audible book vs podcasts or other things. Only committing to one source of education vs many.
• Brain dump. Just the other day I was walking around our home in Charleston getting it ready for tenants to move into our guest room while we’re back in the midwest. I was keeping a mental list. Anytime I find myself keeping a mental list I immediately open up on my phone and create a list in my notes to centralize all my thoughts/ideas/things that I need to make note of. Later I made a time block on my calendar to execute the list whether it was buy boxes, getting keys made, move items from our kitchen to our room.
• Journal and answer the question, “What am I thinking?”
• Quiet time. 
   

That’s all for this week. I’d love to hear what you’ve taken away from this episode and how you are going to eliminate some of the thought clutter you’re experiencing in your life so DM me on Instagram @attentionaudit and share your favorite takeaway!

See you next week!

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