When you’re overwhelmed with everything in life and your head is buzzing with numerous tasks, thoughts and problems that need your attention, it’s very difficult to get a grip of the situation and do something about it. However, I’ve always found that the first step is to sit down, get my notepad out and really write down everything that’s bothering me (do you do something similar?). This process is often called the mind sweep. However, for it to really work I’ve realized that there are certain rules you have to follow. Essentially, you can’t hold back because if the thought is in your head, it deserves your attention regardless.
- You can’t catch too much/too little
There is no limit to how much you might have floating around in your head. Just because you may only have a small list of stuff captured, it doesn’t mean you’re thick. Likewise, you may have pages upon pages of thoughts and tasks to do, but that doesn’t make you a creative genius either. - You’re not committing yourself to it
Don’t be put off by the amount of stuff you might capture. Sure, a huge list of potential to-do’s can seem intimidating, but it doesn’t represent stuff you have to do. As long as it’s out of your head and down on paper, you can make rational judgments on whether you really need to pursue it or not. Your brain will let go of it much more easily that way. - Don’t aim for completeness
You can’t drag everything you might conceivably want to do out of your head. When you think you’ve got everything down, something else will always pop up. You can be thorough, and there are tools out there to help you capture as many loose thoughts as possible (like my trigger list), but you will never have the perfect mind sweep so don’t get hung up on it. - Don’t be judgmental
You might have a wacky idea for a project at work but you think your boss will hate it. However, you won’t stop thinking about it till you capture it. Don’t worry about jotting down a silly thought or a crazy to-do item. Regardless of your feelings about a particular idea or task, if you’re thinking about it, it needs your attention.
February 8, 2010 at 02:56PM
Hi this is a great site with so much useful information. I have been using mindsweeps and mindmaps for quite sometime outside of GTD, so I am very interested in how other people use them. I really like the weekly planner sheet with the mindsweep column.
I have teo specific usage questions.
1) Additional items to Mindsweep
From what I gather, it makes sense to do mindsweeps during a weekly review, either free-flow or aided with a trigger list. Once that session is over and you have the list, does one add additional items as the come up during the week?
I can see arguements both ways. My concern of adding the items would be of getting overwhelmed with all the new items as they appear on the list.
2)Starting Next Week’s Mindsweep
A second question: when you do the next week’s mindsweep, do you start from scratch or do you use the prior weeks mindmap as a baseline?
Here while it would make sense to use the prior weeks, one can argue that the point of the mindmap is to capture what it top of mind, rather than simply repeating items week over week.
Thanks in advance for your comments
Regards
Luis