Empty Your Mind

What I do is I use Microsoft Excel, and now I am using Dragon Dictation. There was a time when I would type out everything that was on my mind. I am a big journaler; I still use the written process today and I travel a lot, so I am in and out of airports. Wifi is not necessarily available to me all the time, and a journal and a pen are a lot quicker in my situation then texting. I need to empty my journal — I need to Empty My Mind:

• I need to stop
• I need to review emails
• I need to review files
• I need to review the journal
• I need to get it out of my mind all in one place, all on one massive list, so I can create space to be able to make some better decisions and actually some better thought-leading ideas going forward.

Because, again, if your vessel is full, it is very very difficult to be able to bring additional information in going forward. So you’ve Emptied Your Mind and you’ve reviewed all kinds of different areas where information might very well be sitting that has not been acted upon. You can have notes on your iPhone.

Step 1: Empty your mind into Excel

The reason why I use Excel is because I can then put in a column to categorize the information. So, categories could be related to planning, could be related to finance, could be related to the team, could be related to delegation, could be related to blogs, articles, book, powerpoints, association work that you are doing, client, marketing, sales. You categorize everything and, incidentally, I am talking about a white paper here called Empty Your Mind. I’ll send you a copy of the instructions.

Step 2: Sort the categories

That will give you the opportunity to be able to look at the action steps required by category, and then from there, you can prioritize. And then, from there you can start making some decisions as far as what is absolutely urgent. You can have a list of 100 things but you’ll notice that there maybe 3 or 4 that are absolutely urgent that you need to take care of right now.

Step 3: Do, Delegate, Dump, Defer

During the Empty Your Mind process, I’m suggesting that you Empty Your Mind. I’m not asking you to get active, I’m just asking you to Empty Your Mind, categorize it, make some decisions in respect to when you are going to do it. And then, the next one is when are you going to delegate it; and, the next one is you may very well may defer it or dump it. You’ve heard that expression, do it, delegate it, defer it, dump it — but then you are in charge of your time going forward.

Step 4: Hire and Do What You Love

Now another reason why it’s important to Empty Your Mind is you can take that list and you can highlight everything that you love to do. Everything that’s on that list that is not highlighted, you’ve just written the job description for the assistant that you need to hire to be able to create some space, so you can do what it is you love to do.