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As part of our high-performance career growth journey, let’s talk about junk drawers.
There’s a double meaning. Tune in to find out to learn about the details!
If you’ve ever felt exhausted after a long day and just couldn’t clear your mind then this episode is for you.
Simple changes in your daily routine could lead to a happier, calmer, more organized personal and professional life.
If you’re willing to make a few, simple organizational changes you could free up some of your time while reducing stress and work smarter not harder.
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Chapters
[00:16] George Carlin’s “A Place for my stuff”
[01:30] Our stuff turns to junk
[02:28] Letting go of stuff like Marie Kondo
[03:08] The 2nd Junk drawer is in our mind
[04:46] Mental junk affects our bodies
[06:16] “Tomorrow” never comes
[07:21] Our brains replay it all
[08:32] Emptying out your mental junk drawer
[09:38] The biggest benefits of cleaning out your mental junk drawer
[10:19] Reducing your stress level & trying to control Cortisol
[11:48] Storing “random thoughts”
Referenced Links
Marie Kondo, Organizational Expert
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speaker 0: 0:00
welcome to career growth made easy with Craig. And so I'm your host. What's in your junk drawer? Today's podcast title poses a question, but there's a double meaning. Stick around to find out what that is. The late George Carlin, a comedian, once had a skit, and he called it a place for my stuff. Our collection of stuff starts out as early as when we're babies with a crib or cradle. Maybe we have a small dresser nearby for one piece outfits. I think they call it used to call him one sees if I remember correctly and you know, our crib cradle might be in our parents room for quick access, right? But as we get older, we get our own bedroom, maybe even our own dresser and a closet. We start to fill it up with clothes and other things. Then, as we move out, maybe go to college. We might share an apartment or get a dorm room, just like before you have your own bedroom. Now the additional common areas, like a living room and kitchen, more room for stuff. Fast forward a little bit. You might rent or buy a house. Now you've got to deal with multiple rooms. You might have access to a garage, maybe even an attic, maybe even an external storage shed. Our capacity for stuff keeps getting greater and greater. Sometimes stuff doesn't get put away, though. Maybe it's not really ready for the junk drawer yet. It just needs to sit out on the counter for a little bit, or maybe on a dresser for a while. Some time passes and some of those materials might eventually end up in a junk drawer. Once the drunk door fills up, you might move some materials into your garage. Maybe box some stuff up, put it in the attic or carried out to a shed. If you have it now, you've made room for more stuff, more room on the counter and more room on the junk drawer. Your conveyor belt of stuff keeps moving. Eventually, though, there's nowhere else to go. You've reached the final stage. You can recycle your stuff, donate it, trash it or one person's trash is another person's treasure. You could try and sell it, but what makes us hold on to stuff so long? And why do some of us have so much stuff. Maybe we need help separating ourselves from our stuff. Enter organizational shows like this one from Marie Condo. I call her a professional de clutter while she has a couple steps to helping you de clutter and organize your home. Or perhaps your apartment. Her entire process focuses around one question at least. The way I see it and it is, does it spark joy? What she means is, does the item you're holding or looking at? Does it spark joy? If not, that item is set to move on. I told you at the beginning there was a double meaning to this podcast episode title, and the second meaning is your mental junk drawer. Whether we realize it or not, we're affected by many things in our lives in a very similar way. There's a lot of junk, and I'm using that word loosely in our minds. Okay, it's not really junk, but more like unfinished stuff. Unfinished business tasks, activities, events to remember. If we're going to get more efficient in our lives, both personally and professionally, we need to clean out and clear up our minds. Otherwise, our mental conveyor belt of stuff just keeps on moving to prove this to you. Let's say you're driving in your vehicle starts to get low on gas. You might pass a gas station or two and think or say even I'll get to that later. Guess what? That's unfinished business, and it goes in your mental junk drawer. Maybe your vehicle has a warning light on, such as a check engine or service ins and soon light. Did you ever think, Oh, I'll get to that later? Or maybe this weekend? Or on my day off? How about for those of you in an office environment, we might have two phones, one of the office on the desk and one cell phone. They both have voicemail. Then there's texts. Email desk, posting notes, sticky notes, dry erase boards, pinup boards. All this for two duelists reminders on meetings, project, due dates, report deadlines, et cetera. If we allow it, all these things can really become overwhelming, even overloading our mental junk drawer. So let's see if any of this stuff is affecting you right now. Let's do a small self assessment. When you woke up today, what's the first thing that popped into your mind? What's the first thing you thought off. If even one of those ideas was unfinished tasks or unfinished business, you have junk floating around, and if you had multiple thoughts or activities in your head, it can become overwhelming. In some cases, you could even feel defeated before you start your day because you might feel like it's just too much to accomplish. Have you ever been there? I have on a personal note. This happened to me back when I had my unexpected job loss. I woke up most days with thoughts such as, I have so much to do, so many job applications to file to check email for job responses. Then there's the unpaid bills. I need to organize those daily. So I know what's the most important one to pay when I finally do get a job and a paycheck. If you didn't wake up that way, great for you. Maybe it happens later like you might need a cup of coffee or to finish breakfast first, and that gets you kick started. Did your mental to do list start as you traveled to work or school? Maybe you heard or saw something that triggered a memory of unfinished business that goes in your junk drawer too. Now, let's switch gears to bedtime. Ever had a hard time falling asleep? Because you're thinking about the tasks or activities that you still need to perform tomorrow. Me, too. Now, I want to warn you if you and I don't do something about this, maybe change our approach to things that day called Tomorrow will never come. What? No, I mean about that. Well, do you remember the old phrase? I'll get to it tomorrow. Potentially, We will do some of the open tasks, chores or activities tomorrow and get it off our mental to do list. Heck, we might even finish all of them success, right? Not exactly, because some other type of chore task activity is going to crop up and re populate our list. Will likely Philip are mental junk drawer again. We joked about the mental conveyor belt of stuff. Unless we make a change, this process will likely continue. If you're thinking Hey, I got this far in life. Why should I change? Well, maybe didn't realize it, but this mental junk drawer does affect you. Have you ever had a tough time falling asleep or you wake up with hundreds or even thousands of thoughts racing through your head. This could be because you're mental. Junk drawer. Conveyor belt was still running. The human brain doesn't like unfinished business. It's kind of like a record with a scratch or a skip. I know I'm dating myself here, but I have an excuse because some of my Mementos from my parents are a few older records. If a record had a scratch or a skip, it would play a short length of audio. It would hit the scratch and skip back, kind of like a three second rewind, and then it would play the same thing again and again. The point is, our brains can be thought of as playing multiple skips. I need to go get gas. I'll take the car to the shop tomorrow. I'll get that roof repaired tomorrow. I'll write my report later, and these things keep going on in on. In Episode three, we talked about being overloaded and focused on email and text communication with ways to become more efficient and more effective. This episode deals with stuff, but like I called it junk junk in our minds, our goal this episode is to clean out and clear up whatever mental junk is in our drawer. We're gonna move most of our mental to do list items out of our minds and into a trusted place. It will take some time and practice to get into new habits. But once you do, you should start to feel well, a sense of relief, a release of pressure, even maybe a boost in your confidence. What's happening in your brains background is that you're giving your mental conveyor belt time to rest. To move our stuff out of our minds. We need to trust the storage system that we're going to use now. That sounds funny, but it could be something as simple as a dedicated paper notebook. It could be an action item log, maybe even a spreadsheet or task list. You might carry that on your cell phone or on your computer. I would keep workin home separate, though, and it doesn't matter what technique you use. As long as you follow through and continue to use that storage system, your mental junk drawer should start to empty itself on a regular basis. The biggest relief I felt and benefits I have seen come from performing the transfer of the mental junk drawer items into storage at the end of the workday, especially before your weekend starts. Years ago, I started with just a regular note pad, and I put the day's date on it, titled it to Do List and then wrote down all my work related open actions. It was important for me that I kept that note pad with me at all times. You never know when an idea might pop into your head. Remember, change takes time, and it's natural for our bodies to resist. You can start out small and slow with this process, but the key is to use a trusted storage system for work and for home or personal. If you place your mental stuff on one form of storage a paper notebook, for example, and the next day you can't find it. Your brain won't trust your process, and it could negatively react. Possibly releasing the stress hormone cortisol cortisol is what triggers our fight or flight response and puts you into survival mode. Therefore, it's really important to take this organizational change seriously and to choose storage systems that you're familiar with trust and can easily access on a regular basis. It's okay to take paper notes throughout your day and then, at the end of the day, move them to computer based system. Your cell phone computer spreadsheet. What have you just realize you're doing the work twice, so it's not that efficient, but this could be a really good practice to get started and then transfer over to a single storage system. So you're not repeating yourself each day. I hope that this discussion on junk drawers got you thinking, even if a little, maybe you'll clean up your physical junk drawer today and slowly start working on unclogging your mental juncture or two. Hopefully, you can eventually slow down or even stop your junk drawer conveyor belt in your head and get some good rest. Now let me clarify a point about your storage system for work. When you're just starting out, you might have what seems like a random thoughts of work tasks and unfinished business popping up into your head. They might even happen when you're off the clock on personal time. If that's the case, I figure it would be helpful to have your work storage system handy whether it's your cell phone to log the notes, a computer or paper note pad. The important thing here is to properly and promptly transfer the thoughts out of your mental junk drawer and onto your trusted stored system. When you do it, they should provide some feeling of relief as you clean out your mental junk drawer. Finally, if you already have a system that works, you don't have to use this one. These are just some ideas that I have learned and implemented over my time working on career growth, and I hope that maybe sharing them with you helps out in some small way. We would love to hear from you at info at craig Ansel dot com. If you found this information helpful or if you have suggestions, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Check out the show notes at Craig and sell dot com because sometimes when a show has freebies in it will have the link there for your download. Our goal is to help his many people is possible regardless of where you are in your job or career growth journey. If there's something particular you'd like to hear in a future episode. Email us at info at craig Ansel dot com. And if there's enough interest, will put it together for a show in the future. Our website is Craig and sell dot com. That's C R A I g a N, C e l dot com and this podcast is career growth made easy. Please share this information with the family member, friend, coworker, maybe school or church member. You never know what struggles they're going through and a little bit of fun. Inspiration and information could go a long way and lifting them up and building a strong path for their career growth. This has been Craig and sell, reminding you we helped turn problems into potential and issues into opportunities. We'll see you next time blessings.
