Every now and then, a practice comes along that changes everything. This is one of those. So, if you’d like to experience more productivity and mental spaciousness, read on.
Many years ago, when I was a graduate student at the University of Santa Monica getting my Masters in Spiritual Psychology, our teachers would often talk about what they termed “incomplete cycles of action.” I now refer to these as ICAs.
An “incomplete cycle of action” is exactly what the name suggests—there is some action that is incomplete in your world. If you’re like me, there could be many of them. An ICA can be anything from a phone call you’ve yet to return to unfinished projects to a brilliant business idea that you keep talking about but you haven’t birthed yet. Many, many things can fit into this ICA category.
Let me elaborate on how/why this is so important. So, let’s imagine that you have a lightbulb out in a room in your house. Every single time you go to turn the light on, you notice that it’s out, and you tell yourself the oh-so-familiar “I need to remember to do that.” You see, every time we walk into a space or are reminded of unfinished tasks, it is like an energetic tether. Imagine that when you walk into a mental room where a lot of ICAs exist—I need to change that lightbulb, oh, there’s that Amazon return, I keep forgetting to call my sister, when am I ever going to finish that online class, I really need to pay that bill…
Every single one of these unfinished tasks is creating an energetic pull on your attention. Visualize actual tethers going from your brain to each of these ICAs. It’s kinda frightening and certainly can be overwhelming! As humans, we thrive on accomplishments. We get a little dopamine high and a sense of pride from task completion, so when we have thousands of ICAs (big and small), our brains are busy trying to catalogue and complete, catalogue and complete. But the list is often long and our efforts are scattered so these don’t get done very efficiently and effectively.
The solution:
- Make a giant list of your ICAs. Just brain dump everything that’s been on your mind that needs to get accomplished—everything from “change the light bulb” to “write my book.” I like to put these on post-it notes so I can color coordinate and also move them around and categorize them later.
- Categorize by importance: “very important,” “important,” “kinda important,” and “I’m probably fine never completing this.” I typically pick a color of post-it notes for each one of these levels of importance (blue for “very important,” green for “important” etc.).
- Then, I look at my list in this new way, paying special attention to the “very important” and “probably never completing this” categories. This will likely be illuminating for you. The “not going to complete” category can be especially liberating. We can create so much mental space just by taking something completely off our to-do lists! Celebrate the fact that you have decided to no longer send any of your mental energy to these projects. You are now liberated from them.
- For the things that are important to you, look at each one and decide how much time you would need in order to complete it. Write this approximate time on each of the post-it notes. This will help you see that it could actually take just one hour on Saturday morning and knock out all the little quick ICAs (light bulbs, paying bills, etc.) in one go!
- I highly recommend starting with these quick wins as it will feel so satisfying to just get those done. This completion satisfaction is really important as it creates momentum and confidence to handle the more time consuming tasks next.
- You’ll then repeat this process of assessing 1. the level of importance and 2. the approximate completion time. You will then schedule and block off time on your calendar to actually get these things done.
- Celebrate getting these accomplished by rewarding yourself in some way so that you are motivated to keep going.
In addition to the obvious shortening of random things on your to-do list, this is such a great thing for your mental health! Why? Because you have less of those energetic pulls tugging at you all time, you will feel more relaxed, and your brain can now use more of its own hard drive to work on new things instead of being bogged down with a bunch of ICAs. I feel I’ve used the term “liberating” numerous times here, but it really is the appropriate term—the more you cross things off your list, the more mental freedom you’ll experience.
Give this a try and let us know how it goes for you! If you’re not up for doing the entire process with the color-coded post-its, just make a list, pick the quick and easy ones, and knock them out. You’ll be amazed at how productive and accomplished you feel just getting those simple tasks done.
