The Joy of a Clutter-free Mind

Over the past few weeks my mind has been filled with plans, dreams, and visions for our future church plant. Having the freedom to think, plan, and dream has been exhilarating to say the least.

The use of the word freedom was intentional and for a good reason. My mind was free from a constant string of things that needed to be done, appointments that I needed to schedule, emails that needed to be send, and people that needed to be contacted. This isn’t to say that I my schedule and to-do list has been empty. On the contrary, my work load has only been increasing over the past few weeks.

Rather, my mind is free from worry and clutter due to the implementation of a system that I can trust to manage not only my list of tasks and to dos but also my goals, projects, contact lists and networking files as well. In other words, it’s a system to manage every bit of data that would normally be swirling around my head, causing not only an excessive amount of stress as I worry how I will accomplish all that I have before me, but also the worry and consequences that result from items that I have forgotten to take care of.

My mind was free from all of these because over the past few months I have been gradually incorporating David Allen’s Getting Things Done system into every aspect of my life.

Throughout the course of our day we have multiple sources of input that deposit information into our life. It is at that point we are in need of tools to help determine what to do with each piece of information and a place to put it. Doing this gets all of the input out of our memory and in a place that we know where to access it at any point.

Instead of trying to remember every phone call or deadline, we now know where and when to access this information. No more “oh yeah, I need to remember that in the morning” while we are trying to fall asleep. The information is stored safely in our system. Which frees our mind to dream and scheme to our heart’s content.