Our brains are designed to focus only on a couple of things at once. It can’t handle the barrage of stimuli around us, so it sometimes shuts down. Often, this comes when you’ve been working for a while and as a result, your productivity just drains away.
When this happens, you can’t seem to get anything done. If you’re writing an article, the words you string together seem forced and choppy. If you’re learning a new subject, the concepts get lost in your brain.
It’s unlikely that you can prevent this feeling forever, but there are ways to conquer it. I personally found that doing these three things (in order) has rejuvenated me every time.
1. Distance yourself from work
Arguably the hardest to do, stop thinking of work when you feel overwhelmed and take a break. This could range anywhere from a five-minute refresher to an hour of relaxation.
For this break, you can do anything that clears your head. The list can range anywhere from meditating to watching Netflix. It also encompasses everything in between — like walking, working out, reading, and even taking a shower.
Personally, I like to go on walks. I walk around my neighborhood, listening to music, an audiobook, or a podcast. This helps me to disconnect with my work and reset my brain by giving it some well-needed rest. Taking it one step further, you can fully disconnect by walking without any stimulus, even from music or podcasts. This gives you time to think and daydream.
Daniel Levitin, McGill University psychology professor says, “In daydreaming mode, one thought melds into another even when they’re not particularly related.” This daydreaming mode can connect concepts that your brain never fully understood. You get a deeper understanding of the clunky grammar rule or the complicated math equation.
When you disconnect, you let your thoughts settle. You allow them to fall into place and cohesively combine into one. By doing so, you’re actually making better use of your time by taking breaks than by learning even more.
Have you ever wondered why we have some of our most profound thoughts in the shower? Scientifically, it’s because of the combination of relaxation and a distraction-free environment. We can mimic this with a relaxing walk in nature, or even just laying on your bed while listening to some lo-fi beats.
Like the restart button on a computer, taking these breaks make our brains perform better. We close all the tabs (ie. the things we were working on) and give the brain time to run its updates. Afterward, you’ll find that the subject you couldn’t understand or the sentence you couldn’t piece together will more easily come to you.
2. Do a brain dump
After taking a break, I like to do a brain dump. The main point is to get all the information out of your brain and in some sort of storage. I use a website/app called Roam Research, but a journal or notepad accomplishes the same thing.
A brain dump works by making you focused. Because your brain can only focus on two to four things at once, anything more will just slow it down. Eliminating the need to remember everything and jotting it down somewhere will give your brain the memory it needs to focus.
Popularized by David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, he says, “Writing these thoughts down gets them out of your head, clearing your brain that is interfering with being able to focus on what you want to focus on,” he says in the book. It also gives permission to your mind to “relax its neural circuits so that we can focus on something else.”
It can be as structured or as unstructured as you want it to be. I like to divide my list into thoughts, tasks, and ideas. Most of my thoughts are spontaneous musings from my break. My tasks can be further divided into urgent and non-urgent, which I use to check off when I have time. My ideas are more detailed thoughts from my break that I want to explore further.
Dumping your brain is also important for an organized life. When you force your brain to remember all your tasks, it’s a lot easier to forget something. The Ebbinghaus curve of forgetting demonstrates the rate at which information is forgotten over time. Within an hour, you forget approximately 50% of information; within a day, 70%; and within a week, 90%. Your brain is a powerful computer, but not a storage device.
You’ll feel revitalized after clearing your head. If taking a break is the reset of a computer, this is like the process of opening your computer to a clean desktop. The computer clears away all the clutter and starts off fresh, just like your brain when you clear away all your distracting thoughts.
3. Organize your tasks
The last step is to organize everything you need to do. Being overwhelmed is largely a product of too much on your mind. By organizing your tasks, you give yourself a mental break while propelling your momentum to get working again.
I start by using the two-minute rule to get the smaller tasks done. This rule, from James Clear in his book, Atomic Habits, explains that sometimes it’s easier to get harder things done when you have momentum. As a result, whenever you have a task that can be accomplished within two minutes, you should do it immediately.
Once I finish all my two-minute tasks, I start planning the rest of them. I group them by category, which makes doing them more efficient. Grouping them allows me to focus on specific parts of my brain at once. One group has everything that requires little brainpower, and another group has high-attention tasks. Similarly, I can divide my tasks by subject, like writing or math. This way, my brain doesn’t have to switch its thinking between multiple subjects.
Then, I use the Eisenhower Matrix to decide the order in which I’m doing things. This way of organizing divides all tasks into four groups: urgent and important, urgent and unimportant, non-urgent and important, or non-urgent and unimportant. After sorting my tasks, I complete them all in the order from important to unimportant, followed by urgent to non-urgent.
In my experience, the things that set people apart are the non-urgent but important things they do. This could be things like working out, writing a book, or starting a side-business. By doing these things, I’ve found that it’s a much better use of my time than doing the urgent but unimportant tasks.
Continuing with the computer analogy, this is like reopening some tabs. You’re dipping your toes back into work, but not overwhelming yourself with it all at once. Instead, you’re organizing and delegating it, working towards finishing one thing at a time.
This routine is a lot. It’s a comprehensive guide to everything that I’ll do, which works but can be overkill. This method is made so that you can take everything that I use, or just add some parts to your existing routines. Some people require more rigidity, while others thrive with flexibility.
Still, I’m sure that these principles will work for everyone, albeit adjusted in small amounts. The three steps are universal: take a break, clear your head, and reassess. Once you have those steps down, you can tailor it to what helps you the best.
