Do you laugh when someone asks what you do in your “free time”? When you do get a moment to yourself do you get stuck and wind up doing the same old thing? Watch this video to help you make your “free time” more fulfilling.
(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/tcdwtd.)
Transcript:
Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of The Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and recently I made a video about Decision Fatigue. Today, I want to talk about its close cousin, Option Blindness. This is what I call the phenomenon when you have an open block of time, maybe as a surprise that suddenly becomes available to you (maybe it’s a free evening or free afternoon you didn’t expect), and you get stuck. Your mind goes blank: “Well, what should I do?” And if you are tired (maybe you’re tired from decision fatigue), sometimes the answer is, “Ugh, I’m just going to plop down and watch television” because it’s a default.
And that’s an easy choice when you’re tired. What I want to do is share with you some capturing tools and ideas for lists so that you will have those ideas when that block of time becomes available to you.
So in my choice management training, we talk about capturing being so important, and having the right capturing tools in your life that work for you the way that your brain works and the kind of work that you have. I use mainly this notebook that I carry around with me and also my Smart Phone as my primary capturing tools. So I have lists.
You know, I’m standing here in my kitchen where my pantry door has chalkboard panels on it. And I really enjoy every month or two changing the favorite quote that I like to draw on here and people come in and ask me: “When do you find the opportunity to do something like this?” And it’s easy. I don’t watch television. I have too many things I want to do to even think about watching television. It is not appealing to me, because I have captured all the fun things I like to do during the workday when I can’t do them. I write them down. I have a Fun and Wellness list of things like this that I want to do when I have my free time available. And then I have a list of books I want to read and movies I want to watch. Here, in Evernote, I usually keep my restaurant ideas. I have a list for every city that I travel to frequently. So, New York City, for example, I have restaurant recommendations in there, or ideas for fun things to do next time I visit. And I just capture and capture and capture. I have a home improvement list, I have a list of gift ideas when I go blank on that, and I have a list of just general fun things to do around town. Like I forget about Peter Pan Mini Golf here in Austin. It’s really fun. I have also a list of pod casts that I’ve been meaning to catch up on. So there are all kinds of entertaining things I can do that I have captured so that when I have Option Blindness I have a place to go for that.
I would love to hear what lists you like to keep and what capturing tools you enjoy using. I use the app called Evernote primarily, but you may have an app that you like as well. Let us know in the comments. And if you want to have help with your organizing projects and need extra help with options on lots of things, we have our experts to personally help you with that. We do that every single day at https://www.clutterdiet.com/learnmore. You can find out more about what we’ve been doing for about 10 years, helping people all over the world to get organized.
We’ll see you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
You may have been looking for what to do when you’re bored or things to do when you are bored.
Leave a Reply