We try to hold more thoughts in our heads than is neurologically possible. The working memory is the mental workspace where we keep and manipulate information in real time. It has limited capacity.
It’s a small ‘container,’ and if you try to keep your tasks, worries, intentions and ideas in there all at once, the quality of your thinking degrades quickly.
If your brain ever feels like an overloaded washing machine, tangled up and on a constant spin cycle, then you can soothe it with what cognitive scientists call, “offloading.”
- Write down what’s preoccupying your thoughts.
- List it all.
- Get it out of your head and into a place where you can see it clearly.
It may prompt you to relate to your thoughts differently and at the very least it means you won’t forget what you were thinking about.
And with the free space you’ve created, you can now put you attention on what matters most.
What’s in your head right now that you haven’t written down anywhere?
6/45 @one_small_think | an Instagram series
