How to declutter your mind -- keep a journal | Ryder Carroll | TEDxYale

Summary

In this inspiring talk, the speaker shares their journey with Attention Deficit Disorder and how they developed the 'Bullet Journal' system to manage their focus and productivity. They emphasize the importance of decluttering the mind, setting achievable goals through small projects, and maintaining a daily practice to stay focused and intentional in life.

Takeaways

• 🌅 Personal Responsibility: We are responsible for creating moments of joy in our lives, such as appreciating a sunrise by making the decision to be there when it happens.
• 🤯 Challenges in Decision Making: Making good decisions is difficult, especially for someone with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), where the condition can complicate the process.
• 🔍 Self-Developed Solutions: The speaker developed their own methodologies to cope with ADD, which later turned out to be helpful for others as well.
• 📚 The Bullet Journal Method: A system called 'The Bullet Journal' was created by the speaker to help organize thoughts and manage tasks effectively.
• 📈 Widespread Adoption: The Bullet Journal method has been adopted by many, with numerous examples and tutorial videos available online.
• 🧘‍♂️ Mind Decluttering: Externalizing thoughts through a mental inventory can help declutter the mind and provide clarity on priorities.
• 🤔 Reflective Questions: Regularly asking 'Why am I doing this?' helps in identifying and eliminating unnecessary tasks and distractions.
• 🎯 Setting Achievable Goals: Breaking down goals into small, actionable projects increases the likelihood of success and fosters curiosity.
• 🚀 Cultivating Curiosity: Small projects allow for the exploration of interests without the overwhelm of large commitments.
• ⏳ Time as a Non-Renewable Resource: Time is precious, and it's crucial to invest it wisely by pursuing meaningful activities.
• 🗺️ Updating Life's Map: Regularly updating one's mental inventory helps in staying aligned with current interests and goals, preventing drift.

Q & A

What is the main message of the speaker about creating joy in our lives?

The speaker emphasizes that we are responsible for creating moments of joy in our lives. We can't take credit for natural phenomena like a beautiful sunrise, but we can take credit for being present to experience it, which involves making decisions that allow us to be in those moments.

Why did the speaker struggle with making good decisions?

The speaker struggled with making good decisions due to being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) at a young age. At that time, there were limited resources and understanding of the condition, and the tools available were either too rigid or too complicated for the speaker's mind.

What is the common misconception about ADD according to the speaker?

The common misconception about ADD, as mentioned by the speaker, is that individuals with ADD can't focus. However, the speaker's experience was that they could focus but were focusing on too many things at once.

How did the speaker overcome their challenges with ADD?

The speaker overcame their challenges with ADD by designing their own resources and methodologies over 25 years. These methods eventually became relevant and helpful even after the speaker outgrew their ADD.

What is the 'Bullet Journal' system the speaker developed?

The 'Bullet Journal' is a system the speaker developed to help manage their thoughts and tasks. It is a method that involves creating a mental inventory and breaking down goals into small, actionable projects. The system has been shared with others and has gained popularity, with many examples and tutorials available online.

Why is it important to declutter our minds according to the speaker?

Decluttering our minds is important because it helps us focus and manage our energy and time better. The speaker suggests that holding thoughts in our minds is like trying to grasp water, making it nearly impossible to manage. Writing down our thoughts helps capture them clearly and allows us to work with them later.

What is the difference between being busy and being productive, as per the speaker?

According to the speaker, being busy doesn't necessarily mean being productive. Being busy often means being in a state of functional overwhelm, overwhelmed by the choices we have to make in our modern life. Productivity, on the other hand, involves making meaningful decisions and focusing on what truly matters.

How does the speaker suggest we approach goal setting?

The speaker suggests breaking down goals into small, actionable projects. These projects should have no barriers to entry, a clearly defined list of actions and tasks, and should ideally be completed within a month. This approach helps cultivate curiosity and passion without overwhelming us.

What is the significance of updating our mental inventory regularly?

Updating our mental inventory regularly is crucial as it helps keep our map of life accurate. As we navigate our lives, circumstances change, and we learn new things. Keeping the inventory updated ensures that we stay on course and don't drift off, reducing distractions and maintaining focus on what truly matters.

What are the three key steps the speaker suggests to lead an intentional life?

The three key steps the speaker suggests are: Reflect - declutter your mind by creating a mental inventory and get rid of what doesn't matter; Ideate - figure out ways to pursue the things that interest you by creating small actual projects; Dedicate - get into a daily practice of keeping your mental inventory updated.

How does the speaker define an 'intentional life'?

An 'intentional life' is defined by the speaker as one where you focus on the things that truly matter, rather than enduring a life filled with distractions and unnecessary responsibilities. It is a life where you have the power to shape your experiences and moments, leading to more meaningful and joyful living.

Outlines

00:00

🌅 Embracing Joy and Overcoming ADD

The speaker begins by emphasizing the personal responsibility in creating joyful moments in life, drawing a parallel to the experience of witnessing a sunrise. Despite not being able to control nature, one can control their presence to enjoy such moments. The speaker shares her struggle with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a condition she was diagnosed with as a child. She highlights the lack of resources and understanding about ADD at the time, leading her to develop her own methodologies to cope. Over the years, she found these methods not only helped her overcome ADD but also remained useful, prompting her to share them with others. This led to the creation of 'The Bullet Journal,' a system that has gained widespread popularity online. The speaker expresses her wish to have had such knowledge earlier in her life and looks forward to sharing insights on decluttering the mind, cultivating curiosity, and maintaining focus.

05:03

📚 Decluttering the Mind and Setting Achievable Goals

The speaker discusses the feeling of being overwhelmed and the need for mental clarity and focus. She suggests creating a mental inventory by writing down tasks, responsibilities, and aspirations to externalize thoughts and declutter the mind. This inventory helps in understanding how one invests their time and energy. The speaker advises asking oneself why they are doing certain tasks and whether they are vital or meaningful. By eliminating non-essential tasks, one can reduce distractions. She then moves on to discuss setting goals, emphasizing the importance of breaking them down into small, actionable projects. These projects should be easy to start, have clear tasks, and be achievable within a month. This approach helps in nurturing curiosity and potentially developing passions, while also learning more about oneself. The speaker encourages focusing on the essentials and dedicating time to identify and pursue interests.

10:07

⏳ The Importance of Daily Reflection and Adaptation

The speaker concludes by highlighting the importance of daily reflection and the need to update one's mental inventory regularly. She compares this process to maintaining an accurate map in life, which can become outdated if not regularly updated. This daily practice not only helps in keeping the mental inventory current but also provides valuable personal data and insights into one's life. The speaker reflects on her own journey, showing how this practice has empowered her to shape her life and overcome her struggles with ADD. She summarizes the key steps as 'reflect, ideate, dedicate,' urging the audience to rid themselves of distractions and focus on what truly matters. The speaker ends with a call to lead an intentional life, one that is desired rather than endured, and one that allows for more moments of joy.

Keywords

💡Joy

Joy refers to a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. In the video, the speaker emphasizes that individuals are responsible for creating moments of joy in their lives, such as appreciating a beautiful sunrise, which is an example of a joyful moment that one can intentionally experience.

💡Decision-making

Decision-making is the process of choosing between alternatives. The speaker discusses the difficulty of making good decisions, especially when dealing with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and how it has been a lifelong struggle for them. The concept is central to the video's theme of managing one's life effectively.

💡Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)

ADD is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulty with sustained attention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. The speaker shares their personal experience with ADD and how it affected their ability to focus, which is a crucial aspect of the video's narrative on personal development and productivity.

💡Bullet Journal

The Bullet Journal is a personal organization system designed by the speaker to help manage tasks and track the progress of personal goals. It is introduced as a tool that the speaker developed for themselves but found helpful for others as well, illustrating the video's theme of self-help and productivity.

💡Productivity

Productivity refers to the efficiency of productive activity. The video contrasts being busy with being productive, suggesting that being busy does not necessarily equate to productivity. The speaker advocates for making intentional decisions to focus on what truly matters, which is key to achieving productivity.

💡Mental Inventory

Mental inventory is the act of listing out one's thoughts, tasks, and responsibilities on paper. The speaker introduces this concept as a method to declutter the mind and gain clarity on what is important, which is essential for the video's message on intentional living.

💡Decision Fatigue

Decision fatigue is the phenomenon where the quality of decisions deteriorates with each subsequent decision made after a long session of decision making. The speaker uses this term to describe the exhaustion that can come from making too many choices, which relates to the video's theme of simplifying life to reduce stress.

💡Curiosity

Curiosity is the desire to learn or know more about something or someone. The video encourages cultivating curiosity through small projects, which can lead to the discovery of new interests or passions. This concept is integral to the speaker's approach to personal growth and exploration.

💡Goals

Goals are the specific objectives that a person aims to achieve. The speaker discusses the importance of setting and breaking down goals into actionable projects to increase the likelihood of success. This concept is central to the video's theme of intentional living and personal achievement.

💡Intentional Life

An intentional life is one where individuals consciously choose their actions and experiences rather than passively allowing life to happen to them. The speaker concludes the video by advocating for leading an intentional life, which is the overarching theme of the presentation.

💡Reflection

Reflection is the process of thinking deeply about one's experiences, thoughts, and feelings. The speaker suggests that reflection is the starting point for decluttering the mind and cultivating an intentional life, as it allows for self-awareness and the identification of what truly matters.

Highlights

We are responsible for creating moments of joy in our own lives.

Making good decisions is hard, especially when diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder.

A big misconception about ADD is that individuals can't focus; they just focus on too many things at once.

The speaker designed their own resources to manage ADD and found them helpful even after outgrowing the condition.

The Bullet Journal system was created to help manage life's challenges and has been adopted by many people.

The Bullet Journal tutorials have been viewed over 5 million times on YouTube and Instagram.

The talk will focus on decluttering the mind, cultivating curiosity, and maintaining focus over time.

Studies suggest we have over 500,000 thoughts every day, leading to being functionally overwhelmed.

Being busy doesn't equate to being productive; it can lead to decision fatigue.

Creating a mental inventory by writing down tasks helps to declutter the mind.

Asking 'Why am I doing this?' helps identify unnecessary responsibilities and distractions.

Setting goals involves breaking them down into small, actionable projects to increase the chances of success.

Small projects should have no barriers to entry, clear tasks, and be achievable within a month.

Cultivating curiosity through small projects can lead to discovering passions and learning more about oneself.

Time is a non-renewable resource; it's crucial to identify and pursue interests efficiently.

Keeping a mental inventory updated is essential for navigating life and avoiding going off course.

Dedicating even five minutes a day to updating the mental inventory can provide profound insights into one's life.

The process of reflection, ideation, and dedication helps transition from a busy life to an intentional one.

An intentional life is one that you want to live, not just endure, and it can provide more beautiful moments.

Transcripts

Translator: Nataliia Pysemska Reviewer: Denise RQ

I believe that we are responsible

for creating the moments of joy in our own lives.

We can't take credit for a beautiful sunrise,

but we can take credit for being there to see it.

We can take credit

for the decisions that we made that allowed us to experience that moment.

You decided to leave house early. You decided to go for a hike.

But making good decisions is really hard.

It's something I've struggled with my entire life.

When I was young, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder.

At the time, there was not a lot known about the condition,

and there were no resources, not to mention that there was no Internet.

So the few tools that I could find were either too rigid or too complicated.

They didn't work the way that my mind worked.

A big misconception about ADD is that we can't focus.

In my experience, I could focus.

I was just focusing on too many things at the same time.

So, over the next 25 years,

I silently made it my mission to design my own resources.

Over time, I actually outgrew my ADD,

but I found the methodologies I'd developed

remained relevant, incredibly helpful

so I shared them with a couple of my friends.

I was really surprised to find out that they too found it helpful.

Who knew?

I designed it for myself,

I'd never assumed that it would work for other people.

But with that in mind, about three years ago,

I built a website and shot some videos

to teach the system to others,

in hopes that it might help them the way that it helped me.

I called the system "The Bullet Journal."

If you search for the Bullet Journal on YouTube or Instagram today,

you will find hundreds of thousands of examples

of how people have adopted the Bullet Journal

to help them deal with challenges in their own lives.

Those tutorial videos have been seen over 5 million times.

It's incredible.

I just wished that I'd had this knowledge when I was that young struggling kid.

That's why I'm very excited to be here today

to share some of what I've learned with you.

We're going to talk about how to declutter your mind,

how to cultivate your curiosity,

and how to remain focused over time.

These practices will help you close the gap

from leading a distracted life to leading one of intention.

And all begins with reflection.

Studies suggest we have over 500,000 thoughts

every single day.

Remember, as a kid, my biggest problem was

I was focusing on way too many things at the same time.

Doesn't that some familiar though?

As an adult, that's just known as being busy.

But being busy doesn't mean that you're being productive, right?

A lot of time, being busy just means

you're in a state of being functionally-overwhelmed.

And a lot of this is due to the overwhelming amount of choices

that we have to make in our modern life.

Freedom of choice is absolutely your privilege,

but it's a privilege that comes at a cost

because for every one of these choices that we make,

we have to make a decision.

And every decision requires us to focus.

And focus costs us our two most valuable resources:

our energy and our time.

We don't like to think about how to invest our energy and time

because it's really stressful.

"What do I want to do with my life?"

It's a very overwhelming question.

It's like going shopping when you're super hungry

but you have no idea what you want to eat.

Have you ever done that?

You walk in, and there is a million different options,

you're immediately overwhelmed,

so you just start picking all sorts of random junk.

Most of it will end up in your pantry of shame.

The rest will go bad in the fridge. It's always a waste.

But you've vowed to do better next time

as you pick up the phone to order pizza again.

Decision fatigue is a real condition, and it can lead to decision avoidance.

Rather than dealing with these thoughts,

we just start stuffing them into the back of our mental pantry

until we have no more room left to think clearly.

That can cause an incredible amount of anxiety and stress

because we feel like we're losing control.

We're overwhelmed. We need room to think and to focus.

So how do we create room?

Like when you cleaning a pantry, we have to start by taking everything out.

We have to externalize our thoughts to declutter our mind.

A good way that I found to do this is to create a mental inventory.

Simply take a sheet of paper and a pen,

write down the things that you need to do,

the things that you should be doing, and the things that you want to do.

Holding thoughts in your mind is like trying to grasp water --

it's nearly impossible.

But by writing down our thoughts, we can capture them clearly

so we can work with them later.

So now we have this mental inventory; now what?

This mental inventory

will actually give you a pretty clear picture

as to how you're investing both your time and your energy.

So the next step is to ask yourself, "Why?"

Why am I doing these things? It's a simple question.

But you don't have to dive down some existential rabbit hole;

simply ask yourself, "Does it matter or is this actually holding me hostage?"

We burden ourselves with unnecessary responsibilities all the time.

We're so distracted by all the things

that we should be doing and we could be doing

but we completely forget to ask ourselves,

"Why are we doing these things? Do I even want to be doing those things?"

But now we have a mental inventory to remind us.

So, for every item on this inventory, ask yourself two questions.

One - "Is it vital?"

Is this item vital, this task vital; think rent, taxes - that kind of thing.

Two - "Does it matter?"

Does it actually matter to you or to someone that you love?

If the answer is no to both of those things,

you've just identified a distraction, and you can cross it off your list.

For every item you cross off your list, you're becoming less and less distracted.

OK, so now, your mental inventory is divided by the things you have to do,

and the rest is probably related to things that you aspire to -- your goals.

The key to setting goals is to set yourself up for success.

And the best way I found to do that

is to take your goals and to break them down into small actionable projects.

If you don't know how to cook, but you want to learn,

don't start by tackling an incredibly complicated meal

for six people.

Even if you don't make a total mess,

the experience will have been so unpleasant

that you run the risk of ruining your curiosity

about cooking all together.

Natural curiosity is incredibly important because it's genuine, it can't be faked.

These small projects allow us

to cultivate our curiosities and help them grow;

maybe even help some of them blossom into fully-fledged passions.

At the very least,

we learn more about ourselves, about the things that we want.

So what do these small projects look like?

For one, they have to have no barriers to entry.

What does that mean?

You don't have to wait on anybody or anything;

you can get started right away.

Two - they have to have a very clearly defined list of actions and tasks.

And three - it should take less than a month to complete.

If you estimate your project will take more than a month, that's fine.

Just break it into two smaller projects.

These projects don't even have to be part of some big epic goal.

They can be self-contained micro goals.

The goal really here is to be able to indulge your curiosity,

try it on for size and see if it fits so you don't waste time.

Unfortunately, time is not a renewable resource.

You can't make time. You can only take time.

It's our responsibility to take the time

to identify the things that interest us, to figure out ways to pursue them

because project after project, goal after goal,

we will learn what we want to eat,

and we'll have acquired all the skills that we need to prepare a beautiful meal.

We'll go from this state to something more along these lines.

But it takes time. And it takes dedication.

Please, raise your hands

if you've ever accomplished the goal that you set for yourself.

Congratulations.

(Laughter)

Now please, raise your hands again,

if by accomplishing a goal it was like a dream come true,

it was exactly like you thought it was going to be.

All right. Not as many hands. Why is that?

It's because time has passed.

You've learned new things, your circumstances have changed;

you're not the same person anymore.

This mental inventory is like a map

and as we navigate our lives,

we have to dedicate ourselves

to a habit of keeping that map updated with all the new things that we discover.

If we don't, our map becomes inaccurate, and we start to go off course, we drift.

And all of sudden, the distractions start leaking back into our lives.

Even if it's only five minutes a day, just five minutes a day,

we have to dedicate ourselves to a practice

that allows us to keep our mental inventory updated.

Over time this skill, this practice

will also provide you with a lot of personal data,

and that data can provide profound insights into your life:

what have you tried, what have you not tried,

what should you do more of, what's working, what's not.

I've been doing this for years,

and it's shown me just how much power I actually do have in shaping my life.

It's allowed that young struggling kid with ADD

to stand on this stage today in front of you.

It's also allowed this adult to get through the speech,

but we're almost there.

OK, so, to recap:

reflect - declutter your mind by creating a mental inventory,

get rid of what doesn't matter;

ideate - figure out ways to pursue the things that interest you

by creating small actual projects;

dedicate - get into a daily practice of keeping your mental inventory updated.

Reflect, ideate, dedicate.

Rid yourself of the things that don't matter,

so you have the time and the energy to focus on the things that do.

I'll help you go from leading that busy life

to leading an intentional life, to close that gap.

An intentional life is the one that you want to live

not the one that you endure.

The intentional life has the power

to grant you more of those beautiful moments in the sun.

Thank you.

(Applause)