This month’s guest blogger is coach Caroline Storey. Caroline writes: “Do you ever have too many ideas crowding around in your head? Along with a ticker tape to do list? And another bucket of things you don’t want to forget?
Taking up valuable headspace that you’d really rather use to move forward?
Keeping you stuck where you are, rather than where you want to go?
It’s not just you.
When I feel like this, I use a hack from my time as a facilitator of innovation workshops (I think I have you to thank for this Laurie Morgan!).
We would know we wanted to generate lots of ideas, looking at an opportunity or questions through multiple different lenses and perspectives to identify new possibilities.
But we also knew that unless we let each person download the ideas they already had in their head, we wouldn’t be able to move forward.
The answer. We actively designed in time for people to ‘empty their heads’ at the start. Often just 5 minutes of download time was all it took.
You can try a version of this anytime you’re feeling caught in thought swirl overwhelm.
- Grab a pen and paper.
- Have a thought starter e.g. What’s on my mind?
- Set a timer for 5 minutes and let your pen empty your head.
- Don’t over think, write what comes up without filter.
- And then stop.
Perhaps there’s something obvious to take action on. Perhaps something has cleared. At the very least you’ve started the decluttering process 🙂
What’s on your mind right now?
And what if you gave yourself 5 minutes to empty it out?”
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