Mental Clutter: Good or Bad?

I have a workshop called Clear the Clutter, Find the Fire. I begin the workshop with a “before” photo of my in-laws’ garage, which could have been featured on an episode of Hoarders. We frequently teased my father-in-law about the junk out in the garage, and his response was often, “You never know when you might need a rusty fan blade.”

After he passed away, his children, grandchildren, and favorite daughter-in-law were left to clear the literal clutter. Afterward, the feeling of that clean and empty space calmed the color-coded, organized file folders in my brain.

I use that image as an analogy for how our brains often feel. We have so much clutter in our heads that it can be difficult to think clearly and achieve the visions and dreams we set for ourselves. I spend much of the workshop sharing ways to refocus and clean out the useless clutter in our brains.

On my recent podcast with Dr. Hannah Rawiszer, she also talked about mental clutter, but she had a slightly different view of what lives in our brains.

Rather than useless junk that occupies our minds and needs to be cleaned out, she sees some of that clutter as valuable thoughts, knowledge and ideas that need to be captured and organized into processes and strategies that help us, and the people around us, achieve success.

The image of the messy garage still works. But rather than focusing only on the items that need to be tossed, what about the valuable things that remain? They need a place where they can be properly stored, found, and used in the future.

Hannah created her signature service, the Client Journey Accelerator™, after nearly shutting down her business. She had built a business that was supposed to give her freedom but instead left her feeling as though she worked for six different employers. When her own mental clutter became too much, she decided something had to change.

The problem was, she didn’t know what that change would look like.

Thanks to a connection of a connection, she had a conversation with a potential client that ultimately helped her pivot and launch the business she enjoys today. Hannah realized that the work this client needed was work she'd been doing throughout her career. She just hadn't recognized it as the foundation for her business.

Instead of doing all the work for her clients, she could help them take what was living in their heads, define the processes and create systems that allowed them, and the people around them, to succeed.

I've experienced a version of that myself. In one of my corporate roles, I had to find a way to organize processes that already existed. The information was there, but it wasn't organized in a way that made it easy for someone learning a process, or simply needing it for reference, to find what they needed.

I camped out in a conference room for about a week, writing each process on a sticky note. Then I moved those sticky notes around until I could create a logical home for every process.

The information wasn't useless clutter. It was valuable clutter without a home.

What's interesting about Hannah's work, and my sticky-note exercise, is that this kind of clutter lives in our brains in every aspect of our lives.

We have calendars that keep our days organized. We have phones with notes apps. We have countless tools designed to help us keep track of things. And yet, how many times have you thought about an important task and said to yourself, “I'll remember that,” only to realize days later that it never got done?

Every one of those tasks, ideas and pieces of information becomes another open loop occupying space in our brains. Maybe clearing the clutter isn't always about throwing things away. It's about figuring out where the clutter belongs.

• Some clutter needs to be discarded.

• Some clutter needs to be documented.

• Some clutter needs to be acted on.

Clarity isn't an empty brain. It's knowing what deserves space and creating another home for the things that don't belong there.

What's taking up space in your brain today? Does it need to go, or does it simply need a better home?

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