How to prioritize your brain dump (to get more done and not feel overwhelmed)

Home Organizing for Beginners: Organizing, cleaning and time management strategies

I find that sometimes I don’t want to take the time to do this whole brain dump thing. Then prioritize it? I fool myself into thinking that if I just roll up my sleeves and get started that will be way more effective.

What happens then? I find myself starting one thing only to notice that another thing needs to be done too. I wind up with several things started and nothing actually completed. In last week’s episode I shared that my husband was in the hospital for a few days.

He’s fine, but the whole situation set us back in our normal daily tasks. Basic housework things. Once everything settled down I thought well I’ll just dive in. I got started with laundry, then worked on the kitchen and then into cleaning our bathroom. Doesn’t sound so bad.

Unfortunately I forgot about the laundry and it wound up being in the washer overnight.

As someone who is or feels like they’re just starting their home organizing journey you want to be set up for lasting home organizing solutions, right? In order to make that happen you’ll have to do something different than you’ve done before or what society tells us.

Instead of allowing overwhelm to rule your life and make you feel anxious and frustrated, you can do a brain dump and prioritize it so that you’re spending your time on the right things.

In this episode I review how prioritizing the way we’re taught actually makes us feel more overwhelmed and how you can prioritize instead and get stuff done.

STEPS TO PRIORITIZE YOUR BRAIN DUMP and GET IT DONE

1. Review your brain dump. Do you feel satisfied that you’ve captured the majority of things that have been in your head? If so, move on. Otherwise add to the brain dump until you feel like you’ve captured it all for now.
2. Select the 3, yes only 3 most pressing items. You must make progress in order to build momentum. When you build momentum you will continue and ultimately get more done in less time. Prioritize the 3 most pressing times.
3. Do the first item.
4. Do the second item. Stop yourself from trying to multitask.
5. Do the 3rd item.
6. Repeat steps 1-5 until you are done or run out of time.

Remember the goal was to overcome the overwhelm.

Would you like help with your brain dump and prioritizing process? I would love to connect with you. Go to www.homeorganizingforbeginners.com and click the ask me anything link. This allows you to share with me what you sticking point or specific struggle in the process is then I can get back to you with a solution tailored to you.

Join me again next week. I’ll wrap up this series on overcoming overwhelm at home. Thanks so much and have a great day!

Your Home Organizing Educator,
Tammy