The most interesting epiphany I’ve had launching Thoughtload is that many people are too bombarded, too frazzled, and too exhausted to even start managing their thoughtload.
Can you relate?
You know you need to focus your distracted attention. But you block time in your calendar and only make it three minutes before you unlock your phone.
You know you need to process your triggered emotions. But you can’t stop listening to the voice in your head, even though you know it’s leading you astray.
You know you need to restore your depleted energy. But you go to bed early and then toss and turn for two hours.
You know what you need to do, but you’re too fried.
I hear you.
You need to clear some stuff out before anything new goes in.
It’s like my mom’s pantry. We arrived at her place a couple of weeks ago with a load of food, but the pantry was already full. My 92-year-old mom can’t reach the shelves. We had to clear out the expired cans of soup, the multiple bags of white rice, and the deflated bags of chips. When we did, we found several bottles of wine and some homemade preserves hiding in there (woo hoo!). And a dead mouse (ew!).
I bet your brain is like my mom’s pantry: full of crap that’s taking up space and preventing you from putting anything new in or accessing the good stuff you didn’t realize was there. (And perhaps also hiding something rotting and vaguely stinky that has been decomposing for weeks.)
What you need is a good clean out. Here’s how to do it.
Two-Week Cleanse
Over the next two weeks, block out five or six one-hour blocks where you commit to existing with no new input. No radio, no podcast, no music, no reading, no conversations. Nothing. You’re going to give yourself six clean-out sessions to process what’s already in there.
For most people, this is easier if you give your body something to do while your mind wanders. Walk, run, ride, fish, color, garden, take a bath, do a puzzle. A long drive on a straight road works a treat.
And you don’t have to be too precious about it. If you think you don’t have time to go input-free, work it into your quotidian routines. Fold the laundry, do the dishes, wash the car, buy the groceries, make your commute…just do those things without any input.
Now, this isn’t meditation, where the goal is to release thoughts and transcend thinking. Instead, this IS the time to think the thoughts and feel the feels so you can decide what to do with them. Is there expired soup in there—grievances you haven’t processed or negative self-talk you haven’t made the space to reconsider or reframe? What about all the ideas and facts you’ve stuffed in there? Which of them are low-value white rice it’s time to pitch and which are the champagne-caliber insights?
The idea is to digest what’s already in your brain pantry. Give yourself the time and mental space to pull out the nourishing, healthy stuff that you want to keep. Figure out how to combine what’s in there in new and interesting ways. What can you concoct from what you’ve already got? Metabolize your emotions to learn new things about yourself that will fuel growth. Discard the waste that’s taking up space.
I just finished this with a group of people from the Thoughtworld community. I got my six hours with a combination of early morning walks and late evening coloring sessions.
I found the first hour difficult. I’ve been in book launch mode with little time to myself. If I’m honest, it’s been pretty frenetic for about six months, so cold turkey to no input for an hour was a bit rough. I was walking in the cemetery behind our house, and less than ten minutes into the walk, I heard a bird song I didn’t recognize and reached for the Merlin bird identification app on my phone before I caught myself. I decided to just enjoy the beautiful song without needing to know who sang it.
Over the two weeks, my experiences evolved. At the start, I had to breathe through a frenzied wave of tasks and to-dos coming at me. I also had a couple of blocks where I experienced a few emotions I’d been working hard to suppress.
Toward the end of the two weeks, my sessions felt so different. I was more energized and starting to feel excited about things I’d like to explore and opportunities I want to capitalize on. (I felt energized to write a newsletter for the first time in a long time. In fact, I came up with four ideas for future newsletters!)
My two-week cleanse was a huge success and got my thoughtload in a really great place, which is good, because this week I had five days of facilitation with two different teams in two different countries!
I’m going to check in with all the other members of the Thoughtworld community to see how their cleanses went. If you’re interested in joining in, we’re getting ready over the summer, and then we’ll start working through the ideas from the book in the fall.
Managing your thoughtload is essential to being effective and to keeping burnout at bay, but sometimes you get into the catch-22 that your thoughtload is so high you can’t muster the energy to fix it. That’s when you know it’s time for a two-week cleanse to process all that’s in there and create the space and energy for what’s next.
A Resource to Get You Started
If any of this struck a nerve, here’s something to help you get started.
The Two-Week Cleanse Worksheet walks you through diagnosing what’s crowding out your air right now, building a low-input menu that actually fits your life, and tracking your sessions so you can watch the shift happen in real time.
And if you want more where that came from, this is exactly the kind of thing I’m building out in Thoughtworld, my community for people who are done white-knuckling their way through overwhelm.