If you’re like me and you love making lists and keeping your life as organised as you can, then you’ll definitely appreciate this lifehack I’m about to share with you.

We’re often struck with worry that is sometimes baseless and unfounded. Our mind is our worst enemy and before you know it, our mind is deciphering a million and one outcomes that could happen (most of them negative) without really any truth to it. Sometimes our worries stem from our insecurities and fears, and that’s when our mind goes on a whirlwind and starts to imagine things that don’t exist.

We do this at work before we have a big event, or a big meeting, or an important discussion. We also do this in our personal life and well, just about at any opportunity we get. I’d like to think this is the perfectionist in all of us, we just want to prepare for the worst. But like any human mind, sometimes it goes a little too far and we become paralysed by our worries.

Image: boomerhighway.org
Image: boomerhighway.org

Here’s a simple list to help you separate what are REAL concerns or simply unnecessary worries

  1. The first step involves writing everything that is on your mind on a black sheet of paper.
  2. The next step requires you to create a list of three columns on a second sheet or paper:
    1) Active Concern; 2) Maybe Later; 3) Delete.
  3. Organise every item from your first sheet into one of the three categories. As a general guide, this might help:
  • Active concern. These are items you need to put into your plan and process and work on.
  • Maybe later. Put these items on a list which you will tackle later, when the time is right.
  • Delete. Simply put, drop all these items from your mind and your life and just banish them away.
Image: lifehacker.com
Image: lifehacker.com

It’s essentially a simple list that forces you to compartmentalise and categorise the worries in your mind. Rather than wastefully letting time slip by on worries that are not very valid. Worrying is one of the evils to productivity, it stops you and holds you back and causes you to lose some amount of self-confidence.

Don’t let this happen and take control of your thoughts and fears.

– Cover Image: pixabay.com

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