Friday Brain Relief to Improve Concentration

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Friday night, the work week has come to an end, and in the last hours I don't feel like doing anything. Unless you have urgent tasks, relax and unload your brain.

What is brain unloading

The idea of unloading the brain was described in David Allen's famous book Getting Things Done. This technique will help you gain more control over your life and learn how to get things done.

Many people have a habit of leaving small things for later, and some big ones too. As a rule, these are important, but not urgent matters. They don't have a deadline, so you keep procrastinating them all the time. These things can be about finances (start planning your budget, try using apps to track expenses and income), or they can be purely household things (sort things out in the closet, make a menu for the next week).

Small things periodically pop up in your thoughts, making it difficult to concentrate on important tasks. For example, you are thinking about some important project - and then again! - a thought suddenly arises in my head: "But you have to clean up the closet, there is so much rubbish there." You switch to thoughts of a pantry, and the project fades into the background.

These small tasks constantly interrupt your train of thought and interfere with your focus, thereby greatly reducing your productivity. Unloading the brain is a great way to deal with this problem. This is how it works.

How brain unloading works

1. Take a piece of paper and a pencil. You can of course create an electronic note, but handwritten notes tend to be better remembered.

2. Listen to obsessive thoughts of unfulfilled business. Remember all the things that periodically arise in your thoughts, distracting you from work. If you can't remember everything, look for clues in your notes, on stickers - wherever you mark what needs to be done.

3. Leave the sheet on the table all day. Most likely, you will not be able to remember everything that needs to be done. Therefore, leave your to-do list on the table for a few hours or for the whole day. As the tasks pop up in your head, jot them down immediately and continue with your usual activities.

As the worksheet is filled with tasks, you will feel that it has become easier to focus. The written things will no longer take place in your mind, and if thoughts about them do arise, they do not take so much time. You just think, "I wrote this case down, I'll deal with it later."

It may turn out that your list of not very urgent things will get really long - more than 100 items or so. Do not be alarmed, this is normal.

4. Make a list on Thursday or Friday. If you have more work-related to-dos on your to-do list, make it on Thursday, if household or personal tasks dominate, on Friday.

How the brain is unloaded

So, you have a ready-made list in your hands. What's next?

Now we need to systematize the cases and categorize them to make it easier to navigate.

First, mark all offline tasks - tasks that can easily be completed in half an hour or less. Better write them down on a separate piece of paper. Let's call it the Activity Sheet.

If some cases are close to autonomous, but require more time - an hour or an hour and a half, you can break them down into several parts and write out on the same sheet. You can mark them with arrows to make it clear that they are related.

Now you only have big tasks that take at least two hours to complete. Think about which things on this list need to be done as quickly as possible, and which ones can wait. Write down the tasks that you may not be able to do on a separate piece of paper called "Someday."

Now you have only urgent and big tasks left. Write down each of them on a separate sheet and break it down into separate steps that can be done in half an hour or less. That is, on each sheet with a large task, you will have a sheet of offline cases. Some of them may depend on others - that's okay, just make notes about it.

Once each major task has been broken down into autonomous steps, write down the first steps of each task on your activity sheet.

This leaves you with a long list of short tasks that can be completed in half an hour or less.

Unloading the brain on Saturday

So, early Saturday morning, you get out of bed, pick up a ready-made activity sheet and begin to do everything that is written there. Set a goal for yourself to complete everything on the list so that these tasks no longer occupy a place in your head, distracting from what really matters.

Trust me, at the end of the day you will feel great. This day can be stressful, but at the end you will experience a lot of positive emotions. This is the satisfaction that all the constantly postponed things are finally done, and the feeling of freedom from small tasks, and pride that you have done so much today.

You feel light, as if a load has been removed from you, which you have ceased to notice, because it has become habitual.

Try doing this brain deload at least once a month. Spend one weekend doing all the things on your list, and on Monday you will feel just wonderful, it will be much easier for you to concentrate on the important things, nothing will distract you.

And the best part is that this effect lasts for a long time - from a week to a month, depending on how quickly you accumulate cases.