how to have an organized mind

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We organize information without even thinking about it. It's not just the act of storing files into different folders, writing down a to-do list or setting up a planner. The way you create an hierarchy of thoughts, prioritize actions, create little rituals around your daily routine are all symptoms of an organized mind.

This is the main concept behind a book called "**Organized Mind" by Daniel Levitin**, who has a PhD in Psychology and who is specialized in behavioral neuroscience. The book is divided into 9 main chapters. The organizational system mentioned by the author has crucial building blocks that allow you to filter through what's non essential and organize the data that you access everyday.

One of those building blocks is *[categorizing].* Categorizing is a form of cognitive economy. You treat things as being of a kind so you don't have to waste time on details that are irrelevant to your goals. The good news is that we all have an intuitive sense of what constitutes a category and how well something fits into that category. That category is than formed based on [**gross or fine appearance].** Gross appearance is recognizing that a bunch of documents are receipts. Fine appearance separates your receipts from relating to personal purchases, to business, to utilities. Some of these categories can be harder or easier to separate, but the goal here is to recognize the main features of the data you're treating, and then be able to tell whether you need to go in deeper and start sorting those main features through other criteria.

The curious thing is that people who are on top of their game are used to this without thinking about it. This is the so called *active sorting* - the way you separate things you need to deal with with things you don',t without giving it much thought. Active sorting can be translated into a system that a lot of you are familiar with - the Eisenhower matrix. It's the organizational system that breaks down tasks into urgent and important; important but not urgent, urgent and non-important and non-urgent and non-important. Some people can do this breakdown instantly when they come across the relevant data; other people have to use another building block to do this exercise → a brain extender.

A [**brain extender]** is a calendar, a smartphone, a time management app, a notebook. These are systems of attention and memory that are external to your brain but are built to be accessed by the brain at all times. As such, the information you type or write down in these brain extenders needs to have the same language as your internal organization and categorization system. This is why you hear a lot of the times that when you're planning, you should use simple language. This is because your thoughts are usually not very complex and the way your brain processes information and organizes it doesn't use fancy words or formulas.

Then you have the famous brain dump, the thing you do when you have to *clear your mind**. It rids your brain of any clutter that's in your head and gives you the space to focus on what you want to focus on. That is why that when you make a huge list of all the tiny things you have to do, you tend to feel more relaxed than stressed. When there's something important on your mind that is not using a brain extender, you're afraid you'll forget it, so you brain rehearses it and tosses it around in circles in the so called **[rehearsal loop].*

Some items in your brain dump may be things that you believe you are able to do at the same time, like working on a project while you're hearing a podcast, or trying to read your textbook while TV is playing in the background. But, as you've probably heard before, multitasking has metabolic costs - it takes a lot of energy to shift your attention from task to task. **"People who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they'll be less tired and less neurochemically depleted after doing it**." Also, multitasking disrupts your problem solving capabilities as well as creative thinking.

And if the task at hand requires a **[multipart sequence]**, the need to avoid multitasking is even greater. These sequences require a proper temporal order, something we can easily transport to a workflow in business or a project for college. So if you have a long term project or task that needs to be accomplished, it's not enough to write down that you need to complete it; you have instead to break it down into parts and import it into a more complex organization system.

FTC: This video is sponsored by Audible.