Sean Buttner walks through a brain dump exercise to clear mental clutter from unfinished projects. Write down every commitment, then triage it: delete what doesn't matter, delegate what you can, commit to the rest. He abandoned an ebook on student debt after realizing it no longer served him.
Foreign. Everyone, this is Sean Butner with start your day with the coach, where we try to start your day based in high performance, which is what I'm trained in, so that you can build that positive day going forward. You can handle anything that comes at you. And this week we've been talking about commitment. And the topic today is actually going to be getting stuff off your plate. So if you're here, say hi, say where you're from. If you have any questions, post those below the video. We love to talk about those. Hey. Hey, Dave. How's it going? And something's caught in my throat. Okay, so this week we've already talked about, excuse me, that commitment is necessary. We have commitments, consistency, commitments. Caring was yesterday. Today we're to just talk about getting things off your plate. So sometimes we have all these loose ends, all these projects that are in our head that we have either put off till forever or we really. We just have all these open loops and we don't have a place to store them. We don't know what we're actually committed to. And that can eat up at you. So if you've ever woken up in the middle of the night because you, you're like, oh, crap, I have to finish that thing, you know, it might be time to get a little bit more organized and it might be time to help clear up some of the commitments that you actually have now. So this is something that I constantly have struggled with over my career because I used to think I can keep all my tasks in my head. And as I've gotten a little bit older, it's beginning a little bit tougher to do that. So I have one method that'll help you really get that out there. And then we can see what we can do about the things that are open loops, things that are unfinished, things that we said we were going to do but we haven't done yet to make sure we can close those loops and, you know, leave some of the weight that comes along with all that stuff. So first thing that I like to do is just kind of clear house and do a brain dump onto a piece of paper. So you get like, you know, you know, notebook paper, like this legal pad. Write down everything outstanding that you've committed to right now. Projects at work, pe, family members, friends, all that kind of stuff. Why do you have outstanding. And this does two things. One, getting it on a piece of paper gets it out of your head so your mind can stop worrying about it, so you can get to sleep later on. And it also, you Know, gives you an idea of maybe there's groups of things you can do. Maybe there's some old things on there that you're hanging on to that it might be time to make peace with and just say, that's not going to get done. I need to, you know, figure out if it's was commitments to other people, like, how can I make that right with them if it's just commitments to yourself, you know, how are you going to be okay letting this thing go? There was an ebook that I had spent like four years writing on student debt that it, you know, always, I was always like, I need to be doing more with this. And you know, I finished the book, did some marketing and couldn't let go of it. And, and it was actually one of my coaches that was like, is this really the most important thing in your life right now with everything else going on? And I had to think about it. I, like, you know what? No, not at all. I, I can let this go. Time to free up space for new things and just feel okay not having made that thing like a number one bestseller on Amazon or whatever. So I, you know, the, the act of clearing house and finding those lingering projects finger or remembering that, oh, I had promised my spouse to take out the trash to do this to this. And having a list, probably doing this like once a week. You know, I journal a lot, so it tends to come up there. But whatever that process is for you to clearing out house and getting it on a piece of paper is going to be super helpful. So when you have it all on that, that piece of paper or in that, that system where it's out of your head, however that works for you, there's basically, you know, three different things that you can do. You can get rid of it, you can delegate it. So you're like, oh, I have a personal assistant, I have a team member. I have someone else that can do this. So I'm going to give that to them to finish. Right. Because I don't have the bandwidth or you can, you know, just crush it out, you know, so if I got this done today and got it off my list, I didn't have to worry about it. And it's something that's meaningful to me too, because we're kind of talking about productivity here. If you're getting all these things off your list, but they don't matter to you to begin with, maybe you need to start thinking about me. I should have a process to say, yes, I'll do this. No, I won't do this. So that's my little spiel today on, you know, getting things off your plate. If you've over committed or if you're you've committed to things that just don't really matter, you know, both those situations are pretty important. So if you guys like this video, too, you can always go to my website, Sean Butler.com I have a weekly newsletter where the wrap up of the weeks will get sent out to you. So definitely check that out if you'd like these videos. If not, then no action on your part. So I get it. Okay, guys, hope you liked this. Quick little tip on, you know, clearing out your head and getting down to brass tacks. Dave from the east, thanks for joining us. Everyone else, thanks for joining us and hope to talk to you guys soon. See you tomorrow.
