How to Reduce Overwhelm (with very simple materials)
canvas life shapers lsat the stack
Today in the Mental Spring Cleaning UNchallenge, I taught the Overwhelm Stack.
Grab index cards, sticky notes, or slips of paper, and get down one task per card.
Next, you can sort through and organize the cards. I answered the question of "How do you ORGANIZE all those cards?"
Here I shared my answer and Neelam Patil's great example.
You can join us in the UNchallenge here >>
In this video
- A little bit about my #1 most often used visual thinking tool, The Stack
- How I keep my cards organized
- Neelam Patil's great example of how she stays organized
- 4 highlights from what Neelam shared
Video Transcript | Click to expand
I just completed Day 2 of the Mental Spring Cleaning UNchallenge.
Each day, for five days, I teach you one specific visual thinking technique,
All designed to:
- Sweep away the mental clutter
- Reduce overwhelm
- Get clarity
- Sort out your thoughts and feelings
...and all that good stuff.
Today is often people's favorite day of the week, historically speaking.
Certainly this today's tool, is the #1 tool I have used, for the most number of years, and most often.
It is the third idea shaper in The Idea Shapers book.
But if you know about zettelkasten or pile of index cards, or lots of different techniques that use sticky notes, it is the same basic principle.
Which is using a stack of little pieces of paper, sticky notes, slips of paper, scrap paper — whatever works — and getting out one idea per index card.
Today's specific tool is what I call the Overwhelm Stack.
Very simply, you just need to get everything that you're carrying around up here, out onto a new surface.
In this case, we're making our thinking modular.
By putting one idea, one task, one something on its own index card,
That is the most basic explanation.
You can watch the replay through Friday, and if you didn't, if you missed us, catch us next, next challenge.
Or certainly, I have a whole full nerd-out, a whole, full Deep Dive Day called Stack Magic.
But I love sharing The Stack because we see such immediate results. It is so flexible.
It's such a big relief for me.
I noticed that when there is too much in my head and I just try to get it out into a list, the list works.
I keep on adding things to the list. It works until...
there's too many things on the list. And I'm just overwhelmed again.
But when you make your thinking modular, get your ideas out one per in this case, index card.
I can then sort through those cards and just hold on to the very next thing that needs to be done, knowing that everything else has a place to live.
So that is what we did today in the UNchallenge.
Absolutely join us for the remaining days. I would love to see you.
And I wanted to share a great answer to a question that came up in the session.
And the question was "How do you organize your index cards?"
Because they, like me, if there's paper, it just kind of reproduces, and it's everywhere.
I said in the session, if I pulled back that curtain, you would see you're not alone.
So very simply, my answer was a couple things —
I love to wrangle these guys very simply using hair bands.
I do not have hair but I have hair bands.
I love these because they last longer than rubber bands, which tend to get brittle and break down.
So very simply, if I have a stack of cards, I just make sure they're held together either by a hair band or a good old binder clip. And it doesn't have to be one of these fancy wire guys, whatever works.
And very importantly, I like to make a title card. Very simply to make sure that there's a card that says what the heck this particular stack is about.
Aside from that, the only other thing I do is make sure they all end up in the same place.
Which is a shelf over there.
And that's it.
There isn't any more dramatic or intensive kind of organizing system, just as long as they end up in the same place. When and if I need to go back to that particular Stack I know where to find them.
But I so appreciated that Neelam shared with us a little bit about how she uses, how she organizes her stacks, and watch, what she had to share with us.
Brandy:
Any other observations? Neelam?
Neelam:
Yeah, I just wanted to add to what the last question was, because I have boxes. I have a couple boxes. Even within the boxes, there's two Stacks.
These are notes I'm taking on two different books I'm reading. And, exactly, there's the title.
I have yet to put a band or a clip on this one, but this one's clipped.
So it's not like, perfect, but as long as they live in one place.
Then once a month, or whenever you have time, you can process them. And I end up discarding some stuff too.
There's always just piles of paper.
So please know you're not alone.
This is like stuff I'm yet to process, and a lot of this needs to go into my computer. These are work notes, believe it or not.
But once they live, some of them need to be living digitally, because they're relevant.
But some of them don't.
This is my biggest struggle. I'm in between. I work so much digitally, but I think better analog.
it's a lot of trial and error. So yeah, that's all I wanted to say.
Brandy:
Great. Thank you for sharing those nuances to how you work with your Stacks.
And I appreciate you.
How many other folks have that analog versus digital, like struggling going back and forth? Right?
Absolutely,
What's the right tool in the moment?
Neelam, you know that if you just need to get things down fast, yes, that the physical tool is going to work best.
Then you have a very simple system of where they go to be processed.
And then then you can say, "Okay, now some of these do need to be digitized or typed in?"
So, this is a just a great example of what's the right tool for the job?
And you can use both, and you can go back and forth.
Excellent.
Neelam:
And just one last thing to add to that — is capturing can work really well digitally, if you just need to capture lots of stuff, right?
Like, type, copy, paste, links, excellent, digitally.
But a lot of times it just becomes that catalog of stuff which is not processed.
What do I do with all this stuff that I've gathered? Right?
It's like a digital hot mess.
But then taking that, and then spending some time analog. Doing the thinking work with it.
'Okay, what is it that I got from this capturing stuff?'
A lot of times, a lot of that also gets deleted. It's a good way to filter out, yeah, or just archive it. 'Maybe I'll need this one day in the future.'
Then it just lives in the archive.
Yeah, thanks.
Brandy:
How many got something out of what Neelam shared that they could use right away?
Lots of hands.
And I just want to emphasize filter out. It doesn't have to be that everything accumulates forever and ever, amen.
So it tends to over here.
But certainly that idea of like being able
to filter out things and how useful that is.
Brandy:
Awesome. Thank you so much.
______________
I want to highlight four things from what Neelam shared in today's session.
1
Simple. A plastic case, a clip, a title card, a box on her desk that she puts the cards in.
She called them imperfect, but they look like they were working perfectly well. You do not need fancy materials, simple, simple materials.
2
Second, is this idea of processing the information later, noticing she's doing a certain kind of thinking as she's reading these books and taking the notes.
Then later, processing that information. If this is the 'What.' that she's capturing,
Processing is the 'Now what?'
Or 'So, what?'
'What do I want to do with this information I captured?'
3
Third, this idea of filtering out information, everything she captured is not necessarily useful to move forward with.
4
The age old question — Digital vs. Analog?
The answer is 'both.'
We do different kinds of thinking when we're using different kinds of materials in different modalities.
The kind of thinking she does as she's using physical index cards to take those notes is a different kind of thinking when she's working digitally.
Capturing all those digital notes.
I know for me, I could take a lot of notes this way [mimicking typing] The best next thing I can do to process that [digital] information is physically print it out and mark it up.
So again, it isn't this or that.
It's and.
The right tool for the right job, and different tools at different times.
That's a little bit about today's UNchallenge session.
I'd love to see you in the next one and Happy Stacks.
When I asked Neelam permission to share this video segment, I was thrilled to read her reply —
Resources Referenced
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About Brandy Agerbeck
In sixth grade, at Fridley Middle School, Mrs. Andrews taught Brandy how to take research notes and write a paper with slips of mimeographed paper. This is where her lifelong love of Stacks began.
Brandy Agerbeck teaches you the visual thinking skills that support your executive function.
Visual Thinking for:
Personal Work + Productivity
Writing + Speaking
Mapping Complex Systems
Learning + Teaching
Facilitation + Collaboration
Brandy's work
books | graphic facilitation | personal | sketchnotes | speaking
