Transcription
A cluttered mind makes for a cluttered life. Everything that you hope to do in the world begins internally, and it's a tragedy every time you allow the mess that's going on in your mind to limit your potential, dreams, ideas, and self-expression in the world. The way you organize your thoughts will impact everything that you do. Do not make the mistake of forgetting this.
Mental clarity touches your opinions, your willpower, the decisions that you make to move forward. You are the one responsible for propping yourself up in life, for expecting the best from yourself and absolutely nothing less. So, I'm gonna share with you how I organize my thoughts. The goal here is to have systems, tools, and a general approach to your thoughts and how you manage them. This is gonna be a video packed with information. So feel free to pause, rewind, or re-watch the video as many times as necessary to absorb everything. I believe what I'm gonna share applies to everything from writing a book to starting a business online. It's because, again, everything originates here. Time stamps to everything are gonna be available in the description.
I'm not sure to what degree you can control your thoughts, if at all, but I do believe you can control what you do about them. And that's where I choose to place my focus. My philosophy on a very basic level is that this is a muscle. Organizing your thoughts is not easy, especially as thoughts and emotions are deeply intertwined and, you know, they're very complex. Sometimes it's hard to know where they come from or why they're happening. So organizing thoughts takes work, and there's every indication this is going to be an extremely important skill in the 21st century so that you can navigate the world, avoid getting taken advantage of. There's a ton of reasons this is a muscle that you want to build. This is a muscle I'm trying to build in a variety of ways. And simply put, I see this as a cycle of internal, external, internal, external. There's a really strong link between the internal and external world. I'm gonna get back to that. Stick with me. You're gonna see a pattern here.
Okay, very first thing. Let's say you have an idea. Maybe it feels genius. Maybe it sounds crazy even in your head. Maybe it doesn't make sense at all. I don't care. It legitimately doesn't matter. Write it down. There's one piece of advice that I can give: it is to write everything down. Why? I consider my brain like a computer. Computers have two main ways of storing information: the RAM, also known as memory, and the hard disk, also known as storage. Storage is spacious and long-term with slow to access, while memory is quick but temporary and limited. The thoughts pinging around in your head are eating up your brain's RAM. You have a very limited amount of space, and you need to be constantly freeing up as much space as possible. There's a ton of crap in there, thanks to an over-stimulating 21st-century world. This is the cost of having everything at our fingertips. If you're thinking about Milanese architecture, how pasta is made, or why Julia isn't responding to your texts, you're not focusing on your priorities, tracking your goals, or expanding on that exciting idea you had just before you turn off the lights last night. Writing things down gets them out of your RAM and safely stored it somewhere else. You can go back to it whenever you want. I find that this helps with anxiety too. It feels like taking a weight off my shoulders, like I'm clearing the debris.
I write my list of to-dos using Todoist. I used to do that in my bullet journal. That also works really well. As soon as I have to send an email to somebody, sign a contract, hit a deadline, go back groceries, it goes there. I use Google Keep to store random ideas that pop up in my brain, things I want to go back to, suggestions I received for movies, websites, restaurants, Italian words that I want to memorize. I like Google Keep because it's fast and automatic, and I've been using it for several years. But any kind of program or software will work as long as you're able to easily record your thoughts. It can be digital or analog, as long as it's really accessible.
I write down how I'm feeling emotionally in a daily journal. I have another one where I scribble random gibberish that's occupying my attention. I think Tim Ferriss might have introduced me to the idea of that one. It's just for your monkey brain to go crazy. Write about what you're afraid of, write about what you're grateful for, write about how incredible Italians sound when they're pissed off. I swear this country feels like one enormous play, and now I'm speaking with my hands like they're converting me!
Many of us have this very silly idea that artists or entrepreneurs are struck by inspiration lightning from the god of creativity. In the very first words they sit down to write, the very first brushstrokes they brush, the very first time they hit record are all masterpieces, and that that's the final result. That is not reality. Delete that from your head right now. And because of this very false idea, what many of us try to do, myself included, is kind of try to edit things before they come out or as they're coming out and avoid saying something dumb. That's a shame because it's not really embracing the process. Don't take yourself so seriously.
What I propose is to take the time that you need to externalize as much as you can. Delay the editing process as much as you can. Get everything out so that you can see it all in front of you. There is science to back this up. We can see things more clearly. We can see what we have access to, where our starting point is, what isn't working. Create bullet points, create a web of ideas, take voice notes. Try things out to see what works for you, but whatever you do, do not keep it in your brain.
Then, when you're ready, when you've put it all out there, you may begin the next step, which is editing. I took a screenwriting class a few years ago, and the biggest takeaway I got from the whole experience was to try to tell as much story as possible in as few words as possible. Less is more. The question to always be asking yourself is "Why?" Constantly, why? "Why do I feel drawn to this?" "Why am I doing this in the first place?" The answer could be as simple as to share my experience or to solve this problem that my community is facing. You do not need to have everything figured out, but if you're at least on the right track in the direction of what could potentially be an answer to this "why" question, then you're already ahead of 95% of the people. Try to figure out the core of whatever it is you're doing, what you're willing to fight for. All of this writing and editing and basically pre-production, if you will, is of utmost importance. Do you think I just sit down and fart out the videos that I create? Absolutely not. I spend at least as much time planning and shooting, and then eight times that amount editing. I want to deliver as clear a message as possible, and to do so, I have to be clear in my own mind. That, for me, is what intentionality is about.
Okay, remember what I said about internal/external, that whole cycle? Well, that was internal. Now, let's go to external. You've drafted some ideas for the presentation you want to give, or the video game you want to create, or the nonprofit that you want to start. Wonderful. You still have a long way to go. Ideas are like grapes in a vineyard. If you don't test them out, if you don't make them suffer a little bit, or a lot, then you don't know how they're gonna come out in the final result. You will not have fine wine, and we want fine wine.
How do you test out your ideas? My favorite way is by sharing them with people through conversation or debate. I do this with video ideas. I do this with the thoughts that I have on material that I'm listening to or reading lately. When I'm confronting complex emotions, talk to intelligent people that will be honest with you. This can be people that you know and trust, but also make sure to talk to people with different viewpoints and backgrounds. These two categories may overlap, they may not. People with viewpoints that are different than yours may successfully shift or reorganize your thoughts on a topic by introducing a counterpoint or something that you hadn't considered, and that's a good thing. That can ultimately strengthen your ideas and how you present them. This is called intellectual diversity. Unfortunately, there are a lot of places where this is absolutely not a consideration anymore, and I think the world needs more of that handled in a healthy way because we all need healthy feedback and criticism.
So, what I would say, what I try my best to do, and this is sometimes very hard, is to present your ideas as clearly as you can and then listen to what other people have to say about it. This is scary. It's way easier to stick with people that just think like you and agree with you, or better yet, to not share your ideas at all. But that is not gonna get you very far. You know, you're not playing this game by yourself. This doesn't just have to happen in the form of conversation, although I do think that's super important. You can listen to articulate people, experts in different fields, and observe how they present their ideas and how they say what they want to say. Another way to do this is posting things online. And this is a little bit tricky. It's what I'm doing right now by posting this video, sharing my thoughts on this topic, but it could also come in the form of, let's say, posting on a subreddit, in a forum, so that other people can debate ideas, like, for example, the mental clarity subreddit that I created, and I will link down below. The tricky thing here is that not all feedback was created equal. A faceless, anonymous somebody stranger out there might not have your best interest at heart. That might translate into very poor feedback. Conversely, it might translate into very brutally honest, valuable feedback because they don't care what your response will be. Keep these things in mind, okay? This is tricky, very subtle. In general, though, I think I prefer face-to-face interactions and the feedback I get that way. And thus continues the cycle, you know, going back to the drawing board, putting out your thoughts, organizing them, presenting them, refining them, adding to them. If you do it well, this process should kill the weak ideas. It should reveal the strong ones. And this is a very abstract process. Okay, it's something that you have to do for yourself and test out for yourself to figure out how you operate. None of this is black and white.
I do find that the more regular I am about offloading the RAM in my brain, putting out ideas, connecting the dots, the clearer I feel about things. This all helps me better understand how I'm feeling or what I'm thinking about certain topics and how to move forward. I also want to share a series of techniques and tactics, if you will, that will help with this process. "Without great solitude, no serious work is possible." Those were Picasso's words, not mine. I find this extremely applicable here. Simply put, too much stimulus is a bad thing. Don't overload your system. Everyone is different, but I find that personally, I need a lot of time by myself to really get to the root of things.
Physical and digital spaces have a huge impact on how clearly you're able to think. If your office or your living room or wherever it is that you do your work is a mess, you have two options: either clean it up or find another place to work. I just can't think clearly in a place that's visually cluttered. For me, that represents unfinished tasks, things that can pull away my attention and pull me off in other directions. I'm very easily distracted, believe it or not, so I try always to give myself the best odds and create an environment that allows me to do my best work. As for digital spaces, it's the same exact thing, but I created already a seven-part series on that, so I'll just link to that if you want help with that.
Everyone and their mother has correctly pointed out that a lot of great ideas come while in the shower. You know, what else works for me? Running. We have to really consider how our biology still plays a huge role in our lives. Physical exercise, other than the fact that it's healthy and it's great for anxiety management and whatnot, does a great job of occupying my body and lets my mind be free to roam. And so when I'm running, I like to listen to music and I let my brain just kind of try and connect the dots and figure out solutions to things that I'm stuck on. This process of taking thoughts or feelings and dissecting them leads to something deeper, and that's the goal for me. This is all huge exercise in trying to learn more about myself because it is always the stuff under the surface that is the most interesting.
And when all else fails, as James Clear puts it, "It's crazy how often I feel like I need to resolve some big problem in my life when all I really need is one of the following: a glass of water, a 10-minute walk outside, a good night's sleep." Three simple things that resolve many of the stresses and anxieties of daily life. I've started applying these things in my daily life, and it is unbelievable how effective they are. There's no need to reinvent the wheel here.
This video was sponsored by Skillshare. I really like the company and what they stand for, and also the people that work there. They offer tens of thousands of courses online in all kinds of topics like photography or business. I think this is the future, and the classes that I like the most are the ones that help me organize myself and how I do things. Three classes I highly recommend are this one by Simon Sinek on how he presents his thoughts and ideas in speech and presentation form, and these two on how to use Todoist to organize yourself. That is literally how I learned to use Todoist, and it's been super helpful in kind of creating more order in my life. We've teamed up to offer a two-month free trial to any of their classes if you use the link in the description below. I'm also really grateful to have their support because it has allowed me to go above and beyond in the production of these videos, and it's insanely affordable with an annual subscription coming in at less than $10 a month. That's pretty incredible to me, considering how inaccessible all this stuff was for the majority of human history. Like I said, the link is down below. Anyway, this is big stuff. Organizing my thoughts has been liberating in many ways, and I hope this video helps. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you soon.