What To Do When Your Mind Is Keeping You Awake (Find The Eight Episode #7)

Does this sound familiar?

You’re lying in bed trying to sleep and your mind will just not turn off. 

It’s common for the mind to get really busy in bed.  

Not only is it quiet and are you not distracted by all the stuff that keeps us busy during the day but that time is often the first opportunity you have in the day to process what's happened, to problem solve, and to just…think.

It also happens to come at the worse time because all of that thinking makes it very hard for your mind and body to power down, especially if what you’re thinking about it leading to a lot of anxiety, excitement, shame, guilt or overwhelm.

Trying to work through things at this time also tends to be really unproductive.

When trying to sleep, it’s common to catastrophize or loop over and over thoughts without ever coming to any helpful conclusions or resolutions.  

Not only can you not sleep, you’re putting in a lot of energy into trying to work through stuff that is probably best addressed the following day.

So today we’re going to talk about how you can use a strategy called capturing to prevent being kept awake by an overactive mind.

HOW BEST PRACTICES FOR CLEANING YOUR ROOM APPLY TO A BUSY MIND

To describe the capturing, let’s look at an analogy.

Imagine your room is really, really cluttered.  

You could spend hours on the task if you tried to figure out what to do with each item that was out of place--whether to keep it, throw it out, or donate it.

Maybe you’d get interrupted and the job would be left half done and your room would soon return to a messy, cluttered state.  

The other option is could can clean up your room in five minutes.

You might not do the best job but you could get your room looking really clean if you grabbed a big box and threw everything into that box without trying to figure out what to do with things in the moment.

Not the best long-term solution BUT, when you looked around at your tidy room, you would like feel a sense of calm and relief in the moment. 

So it turns out, this second option of dumping everything quickly into a box is also something you can do when you have a really cluttered mind.

HOW TO CAPTURE

To help quiet your mind, you can take everything that is floating around in your mind—all of that mental clutter—and offload these things onto a piece of paper.

It can be stuff you need to do.

Ideas.

Problems.

Worries.

Decisions you have to make.

Thoughts about what you’re feeling or experiencing in your body in the moment.  

Really anything that is going through your mind.

REACTIONS TO EXPECT WHEN YOU CAPTURE 

When you do this, you’re going to be tempted to edit what you write. This is really normal because you’re probably used to writing stuff that other people will read.

This is just for you. You don’t have to format it, make it look nice, or worry about others judging you.

Other terms are sometimes use for this exercise: freewriting, a braindump, a brainsweep.

This is exactly want you want to do, just get it all out quickly and without giving what you’re writing too much thought.

Another reaction you may have is overwhelm from seeing all of this stuff in one place.

This is like when you clean up your room and you uncover all of this clutter you didn't even realize was there.

Because this can happen, it’s a good idea to do a big first capture during the day.

This gives you a chance to practice capture when the stakes aren’t has high and an initial clear-out may help reduce what comes up at nighttime.  

Another thing that might've happened is that you draw a blank.  

This is especially common if writing out your thoughts is not something you’ve done before or that you are used to doing.

Sometimes having a list of prompts or having someone to talk you through it can be helpful.

For this reason, I’ll create two bonus podcast episodes—one in which I will talk you through how to do a first big initial capture and one in which I’ll talk you through how to do a quick capture in the moment.

WHY IS CAPTURING SO HELPFUL?

Capturing takes care of unfinished business, at least for the moment.

Your mind has to stay on guard when it has unfinished business. Your mind can’t ease up if there’s a problem to be solved or if it doesn’t want to forget that thing you need to do.  

Capturing allows you do something with this unfinished business which may be enough to let your mind relax and get sleepy.

Capturing helps you clarify your thoughts.  

There is something about writing that is really therapeutic.  

Sometimes when we name the thoughts or emotions we’re having, they tend to lose their power and, when they’re written down, we can often evaluate them more objectively. 

For example, it’s common to catastrophize in bed when you cannot sleep. Once you see your thoughts in writing, it can become easier to evaluate if your worst fears are likely to come true or if, maybe, your thinking is being heavily influenced by your frustration and anxiety in the moment.

Capturing gathers all of the stuff you need to act on in one place.

If you often have the vague sense that you’ve got stuff to do but you’re not exactly sure what that stuff is, the nice thing about capturing is already have everything down when it comes to acting on the stuff you need to get done, the problems you need to solve, and the decisions you need to make.

It’s like having a list when you go shopping, instead of having to rely on remembering what you need to buy in the moment (and realizing you’ve forgotten a bunch of stuff after you leave the store.)

THE IMPORTANCE OF PROCESSING WHAT YOU’VE CAPTURED

Now, one thing you may be thinking is capturing is not going to be enough. And you're absolutely right. 

If you were to clean your room by throwing everything into a box, eventually you'd have to start pulling stuff out of that box and your room would soon get pretty cluttered. 

The initial relief of capturing won’t last if you don’t solve the problems or you don’t act on the things that you need to get done.

Longer-term relief comes from processing what you've captured. Scheduling 20 minute during the day to problem solve or get things done--can really help prevent that build-up of mental clutter.

ACTION:

As soon as you can, go grab a pen and a blank notebook for your room so that you always have something on hand to capture your thoughts when you can’t sleep.

Next, open up the notes app in your phone, name a note ‘Capture’ and use this note to capture thoughts during the day and when you’re on the go.

If you’d like a cheat sheet, it can be found here.

If would like to be talked through how to do a capture, you can take a listen to these bonus episodes on doing an initial capture and an as-needed capture.

Also, if you are interested in reading more about the concepts that we talked about in this episode, I would highly recommend the book Getting Things Done for Teens by David Allen, Mike Williams and Mark Wallace.

SUMMARY:

 If you want to avoid unproductively looping on the same thoughts and clear your mind, this strategy of capturing is one of the simplest and easiest strategies to start with.

But remember that capturing is only the first piece of the puzzle. While on its own, capturing can bring a lot of relief in the moment, but the longer-term relief comes having the time and the skills to process what you’ve captured.

In future episodes and articles, I’m going to cover processing strategies like how to problem solve, how to make better decisions, and how to act more effectively on the stuff you need to get done.

NEXT EPISODE:

3 Ways to Get More Done with the 2-Minute Rule

LINKS:

• Getting Things Done for Teens by David Allen, Mike Williams and Mark Wallace.

• Bonus Find The Eight episodes to do an initial capture and an as-needed capture coming soon. For now, take a listen to this guided brain sweep by the author of Getting Things Done, David Allen. It's geared towards adults but you can adapt it to work for you and will give you a sense of what an initial capture may can look like.