Today I’m going to share a simple exercise I use to quickly get mental clarity. You will find this very useful for different purposes, such as to:

1. Clear your head (especially if your mind is feeling cluttered)
2. Calm yourself down from a restless, troubled or stressed state
3. Free up mental energy (if you are feeling tired)

I’ve been doing this of late and found it to be incredibly helpful. It’s also the same exercise I recommend to my clients to clear up mental blockages.

How It Works – Via Increasing Mental RAM

Imagine your brain as a computer. Every computer has RAM which determines its processing capacity. The more applications the computer is running, the more RAM is used and the slower your computer gets. If you have used resource-intensive programs such as 3D Max Studio or played graphic-intensive games like World of Warcraft or Halo before, closing unwanted applications frees up RAM for these programs.

Likewise, our brain has its own RAM too. This RAM is used for all kinds of brain work, from thinking, recalling, analyzing, to the subconscious actions. You want to have as much free RAM as possible to function at top capacity of your brain.

However, not all our RAM is available when we want them. At least half is occupied with mental clutter – thoughts running in the background.

What are these thoughts about? Anything, really – whether its some task we have to yet to do, some issue we are facing, some advertisement we just saw on TV just now, music we just heard in the mall, etc.

Majority of the clutter is triggered by external stimuli. From the second you wake up in the morning, to when you sleep for the night, you are exposed to many stimuli in your environment. The more active contact you have with the world, the more stimuli you are exposed to. If you are a busy corporate executive, you probably get bombarded with lots of stimuli every day, from your workplace, the society and mass media. Even if you live like a hermit, you will still be faced with your own set of external stimuli.

It’s never obvious how much of these stimuli impact us until we stop to observe our mental activity, say through introspection or meditation. Think of this clutter as the unimportant programs and applications running in your computer. You don’t need them for your computer to function. By virtue of them running in the background, they’re using previous resources. When we don’t process the clutter, we’ll get to a point when we have lesser and lesser available RAM, till there’s no more.

Luckily, we have a biological process in which we clear this clutter – Sleep. Specifically REM sleep. However, it’s not the most effective clutter clearing process since we only undergo REM during 25% of our sleep time. The other 75% is non-REM.

Meditation also helps to clear mental clutter as well. Many people who meditate, feel calmer and experience clearer states of minds because of the same reason. However, sometimes you may not be able to do so – say when you are at work, when you feel too restless to meditate, or when you’re too sleepy and may fall asleep during meditation.

This is where today’s exercise comes in.

Freeing Your Mental RAM via Brain Dumping

This is known as a brain dumping exercise, since you are dumping the contents of your mind via writing:

1. Pick a medium of writing – Either pen/paper or a word processor. My pick is the word processor cause I type faster than I write. Plus, you get to save paper too!
2. Type whatever comes to mind. When I say whatever, I mean whatever! For example, if you are looking at the paper and thinking “wow, this looks so white”, then write that. If you don’t know what to write, then just write “I don’t know what to write”. Basically just get whatever is on your mind down. There’s no need to overthink this. It’s just to get down what you are thinking.
3. Just keep doing this for the next 15 minutes, or however long it takes for your mind to feel clearer. Sometimes just 10 minutes is sufficient for me, while I can take over an hour during the times I’m really bogged down.

Here, we’re using writing to clear the clutter in our mind. It’s a more effective way of processing clutter than sleep or meditation. With sleep, you have to wait till REM before clutter is processed. With meditation, the thought is processed as it “floats” around and out of your head. With this exercise though, the speed you write determines how fast it gets processed. If you type fast, you can process a lot of clutter really quickly.

I use this when I’m feeling mentally bogged, when I need to my full focus on an upcoming task, or when I need to perk myself up for an upcoming task. I can get a lot of clutter cleared out in just 15 minutes, resulting in a much clearer mental state. If I was sleepy before, the exercise leaves me more awake and mentally “lighter” afterward. I can definitely concentrate better.

It’s interesting to read back at what you have written after the 15 minutes. Usually you will notice your thoughts jumping from all places. One moment you may be thinking about what you had for breakfast, the next you may be thinking about your meeting with your boss last week, then the next you may be thinking about your vacation for next holidays. As random as they may be, as queer as they may see, these thoughts have always been on your mind – the exercise merely brought them out so they’re now cleared from your mind. The longer you spend on this exercise, the more clutter you can clear, and the higher your mental clarity.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that you stop thinking about XYZ after you clear a thought. Maybe you have 50 strands of thought about XYZ and the exercise only removed 2 strands of those thoughts. Maybe you come across XYZ later or something that reminds you of XYZ, thus retriggering the thought.

Since you will always be exposed to stimuli, you need to repeatedly do the brain dumping exercise to maintain this mode of increased mental clarity. Just like bathing, eating, or sleeping, you need to do this frequently as part of the clearing/up keeping process. Do this often, and you will feel a greater sense of mental clarity. You’ll also feel calmer as well.

You can also take the exercise to the next level – beyond just dumping what’s on your mind, take the chance to dig into the root causes of those thoughts. Keep asking why, and dig into it. This is linked to the same exercise in Day 25 of 30DLBL – Uncovering Your Beliefs. You may just arrive at some deep realizations in the process.

As for the contents of what you wrote, delete or trash them. There’s no need to keep them unless certain things gave you new insights and you want to keep them as an evaluation process.

Have fun doing this exercise! It works very well for me and I’m sure it’ll be very useful for you too.

Related Posts

• Keep Your End Objective In Mind

To keep your end objective in mind is crucial for conscious living. It can be divided into two phases: 1) Identify your end objective 2) Evaluate everything against your objective.

1) Identify Your End Objective

Whenever you are starting a new task, activity or goal, always be clear on what your end objective is. Why are you doing this? Is it serving some larger meaning? Where does it fall in the larger context?

This is the same as the second habit in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which is Begin With The End In Mind.

There are 3 kinds of end objectives you need to be clear on:

1. Life objective: What is your purpose in life?
2. Goal objective: What is the objective of your goal?
3. Task objective: What is the objective of this task you are doing?

Each objective sets the context for the item below it. For example, your life purpose sets the overall context for your life and your goals. Your goals sets the context for tasks, activities and things you do everyday. Thus, the tasks you do everyday should be a subset of your goals, while your goals should be a subset of your life purpose.

Your purpose is like the grandmother of all end objectives. If you are unclear on your purpose, the other things that follow will be ambiguous as well. You can be pursuing goals, but they will just be set against a hazy context. On that same note, if you are unclear on your goals, the tasks you do will also be directionless. You can be setting a lot of targets for your tasks but they will add up to be a random clump of to-do items.

I have already written extensively on the importance of identifying objectives, so I will refer you to the articles instead:

1. Importance Of Having Life Objective: Why Should You Have A Purpose? Here’s 5 Solid Reasons Why
2. Importance Of Having Goals: 6 Important Reasons Why You Should Set Goals

I have also covered how you can identify these objectives, which you can find here:

1. Identify Your Life Objective: How To Discover Your Real Life Purpose
2. Identify Your Goals: Goal Achievement: Establish Your Goal

When you have your life objective and goal objectives clear, you will be able to identify your task objectives clearly too. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s imagine you are clear on your life and goal objectives and subsequently, your task objectives. Say you are going to a class today (a task). What is your task objective? Is it to maximize your learning? If it is, then do everything within the class to give you the best learning. Sit in the front rows, listen intently, note down all the pertinent points, engage actively in class, ask when you have any questions. Don’t go into the class and day dream, because that is not your task objective.

If your task objective for the class is just to have your attendance marked and you want to do other things, then act according to that objective. Go to the class, sit all the way in the back, take out the other things you want to do and do them while the class is going on. Engage in the class from time to time if you feel it helps ward off the teacher’s guard on you. All in all, act in accordance with your objective. Don’t go half-way because you’re just wasting your time in the process. Either go full-way or don’t do it.

It also applies for activities outside of work-related goals too. For example, let’s say you are going to dinner with your colleagues. What is the objective of doing that? Is it to foster stronger relationships with them? If so, spend the evening with that in mind. Understand what’s going on in their work and lives, provide a listening ear if they need any; at the same time share with them what’s been happening with you and make them a part of your life too. Engage in topics and activities that will help both of you connect better. Don’t get side tracked by other things that may be on your mind. Make the most out of the activity/task you are doing.

2) Evaluate Everything Against Your Objective

As with everything in life, different obstacles will start emerging in your path as you pursue your objectives. Multiple options start getting dangled in front of you, each with its own set of pros and cons. Forkroads appear. Different considerations start seeping in. As if that isn’t enough, people start giving their own opinions and take on your situation. In no time, you start becoming confused by everything that is before you.

When that happens, just recall what your end objective is – the very same objective you identified in the beginning. Assess everything that you see against it. Evaluate your options in terms of how well it serves your objective. If you find that the option does not meet your objective, throw them away. You will find that decision making becomes condensed into a very easy and simple task.

Running PersonalExcellence.co

For example, my # 1 objective running this site is to help others achieve their highest potential. This guides all the decisions related to it. As I run this site every day, I get various different requests. Advertisers contact me from time to time to place advertisements. Program developers request me to do reviews for their softwares. Other webmasters approach me to write guest posts for their sites.

Without my end objective in mind, it’s easy to get thrown off by the various things that occur. For example, I can ask a truckload of questions to each of the requests. To the advertisers, I can be asking: “How much is sponsorship for the advertisement? How long is the campaign? How many ads are you looking to serve? What is the size of the ads?” To the program developers, I can be asking “How is the incentive for me to write the review? How long do you want the review to be?” To the other webmasters, I can be asking “How much incremental traffic can I get from writing a guest post on your site? How long are your guest posts? When do you need it?” For each of these requests, I will have different considerations, such as time, money, resources, the benefits and downsides.

However, when I’m clear on my end objective, everything becomes very simple. I always start off every decision making process by evaluating them against my objective. Do the advertisements correspond to the theme of personal development? Are the softwares in line with personal productivity? Do the other webmasters’ sites themes have an overlap with personal development?

If the answer to any of these questions is a ‘No’, I will turn down the request, without need for further thought. Sure, it may give me more money. Sure, it may give me more traffic. But the primary objective must always be met before anything else should be considered.

Some of you may be quick to point out that without earning money, I cannot sustain this blog forever. That’s entirely true – and this makes earning a secondary objective that is necessary in order to achieve my end objective. Earning money will thus be the activity goal that is needed to achieve my objective goal of helping others achieve their highest potential; i.e. it is the means to my end.

Seeking a new job

Another example which I would like to share and readers will be able to relate to is looking for a job. As you may be aware, I’m planning to return to work after a few months. In the past few weeks, I have been keeping my options open, connecting with head hunters and my previous company to see what’s available in the near term (my ex-company kept the door open for me to return when I left last year).

If we look at what my objective for returning to a day job is, it is to be able to pursue my personal development work (i.e. PersonalExcellence.co, my coaching/speaking activities, etc) without having to worry about financial considerations. Based on that objective, my top priorities for my day job are:

1. Work-Life Balance. This is important since I’ll be managing my personal development work alongside with y day-job.
2. Development opportunities. To grow and help others grow is my core purpose and passion, and if I’m going to face something at least 8 hours every day, it needs to have development opportunities both for me as on a personal level and towards other people. Thus, I’ll need to have work that is dynamic in nature and lets me interact/work with a wide span of people.
3. Affinity with the industry and work. The nature of the industry and work need to be something I have an interest in.

I didn’t list remuneration/benefits as a priority, since the very act of getting a day job already addresses that.

In the past couple of weeks, there were two extremely good opportunities that came along the way which looked amazing by themselves. However, when evaluated against my objective/top 3 priorities, they did not pass the test. Thus, I made the decision to pass them up. While others may feel that it is a pity, their feelings are a result of looking at the options from their own life/goal objectives. It is important to always keep yourself open to the opinions and feedback from other people, while at the same time remembering that your evaluation should be done against your own objectives.

Update on 10 Mar ’09: I’ve decided to pursue my personal development work full-time and not return to a corporate day job For more details, read the post Embracing My Passion.

Are You Clear On Your End Objective?

Ask yourself these questions: What is your objective in life? What is the objective behind the goals you pursue? What is the objective behind the tasks you do everyday?

Whatever you do, always bear in mind your end objective. Every time you begin a task, be clear on what the end objective is. Every time you are working on something, evaluate it against your objective. Only by unwavering focus with the end in your mind will you achieve it.

Related Posts

• Increase Your Mental Clarity in Just 15 Minutes
• Which Area Of Your Life Do You Want To Transform This Year?
• 6 Important Reasons Why You Should Set Goals
• Goal Achievement: Establish