The parking lot
If you've ever worked in a professional setting, you've heard someone in a meeting say, "let's park this," or "let's put that in the parking lot.” Our personal life can benefit from this strategy too.
Welcome to another edition of Sunday Spark – where I share bite-sized ideas that challenge how we think about productivity, wellbeing, and personal growth.
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Happy New Year,
Let's jump right in with a principle that could be critical to increasing your effectiveness in 2021.
If you've ever worked in a professional setting, you've heard someone in a meeting say, "let's park this," or "let's put that in the parking lot."
The principle idea is to free our minds from having to think about something further. Putting thoughts, ideas and problems in the parking lot enables us to continue moving forward with our primary focus. It reduces the amount of time we spend holding on to these and being distracted by them. It also offers a space where we know we won't forget about them.
While we often see this fantastic strategy in a professional setting, our personal life can significantly benefit from it as well. In a personal environment, it's often referred to as the capture habit.
David Allen writes about it in Getting Things Done. He also writes:
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.
The more energy we spend trying to remember our every thought and what we need to do, the less of it we have to dedicate to what is truly important to us.
Developing a capture habit (also referred to as a brain dump) enables us to free our mind for what it's meant to do; solve problems, generate ideas, create links and learn.
This habit focuses on capturing random thoughts and ideas by writing them down in a central location for review later. This simple act ensures we don't waste high amounts of energy holding on to what is in our heads and helps free us from forgetfulness, distractions and enables us to be more focused and effective.
How often are you distracted? Ideas, projects, tasks, to-dos, errands, and more pop into our minds while we're trying to do meaningful, often more critical work.
When we learn to leverage our minds in more effective ways, we significantly improve our quality of life and accelerate our ability to create the change we seek.
Are you often distracted by random thoughts and find you lack the focus you need to be effective? You might be interested in taking a more in-depth look, and reach out if you're looking to establish more effective ways of working in 2021.
Have a great Sunday and a wonderful week.
Miguel,
Sparknotion – Think Differently.