Training Your Brain is Baloney
By: Kelsey Hitchingham
Tags: Organization, Productivity, Entrepreneurship

I saw an Instagram post the other day that said “Skill of the day: Eliminate negative thoughts,” and boy howdy did that piss me off.

For years I got up, went to work and did what I was told to do, whether I was cooking on a line in a restaurant, managing nighttime operations in a hotel, or later writing budgets and reports for nonprofits. Then I’d go home or meet up with my friends, chase dudes and party, and do it all over the next day. There wasn’t much deviation, and the line between work and not-work was crystal clear.

Then a few years ago I took the leap, left my nonprofit job, and started a business. Suddenly everything was work and worry- how to grow, teaching myself how to build a website, figuring out what a “marketing persona” was, calculating sales cycles, always having a business card in my hand, always having a pitch ready, writing list after list after list and then I would sit down at my computer and just read Buzzfeed for hours.

My lack of focus was alarming. I spoke to my therapist about a possible attention deficit disorder. I meditated, I journaled about the fears holding me back. I downloaded Goal Templates, tried Todoist, Wanderlust, Trello, Asana, Monday, and a lot of self-shame. I also started reading a lot of books about optimizing my habits and performance. You know them- a steely-eyed white dude with a buzzcut and a story of overcoming addiction who now makes a gajillion dollars a year telling other people that they way they think is wrong but with a new outlook and a couple of changes in habits, you’ll be at your peak optimization as a human being.

Every single thing failed me. I felt like a failure and white-knuckled my way through Bullet Journals, reams of to-do lists, self-compassion exercises, and more shame. I couldn’t fix my thinking!

Here’s the trick, kids: your thinking isn’t broken. It’s uniquely yours, and a beautiful, wondrous thing that has gotten you this far. Stop trying to change it.

As an entrepreneur, I mostly equate “thinking” with “work,” but these days “work” is really just what I do, all the time. Yes, I rest, but my creativity is poured into building a legacy that would make my father proud. I invest every ounce I can into honing my craft, feeding my curiosity, and when I can’t take another step, I binge zombie shows and clean my kitchen. The shutdown has also dimmed the noise that usually pulls me from one networking event to the other, but where those events used to fill me with guilt because I wasn’t at home trying to squeeze marketing blood from the stone of my paralyzed brain, I now know when to relax without guilt and when to say no to that Zoom happy hour, I’ll be working tonight.

As I mentioned above, I experimented a lot with other shovel-ready products. There’s not a free tutorial on the internet that I haven’t downloaded, a productivity app I haven’t installed, or a notebook printed that I haven’t bought (sorry, The Rainforest). But when I finally decided to map out what I needed and ditch the rest of the mess, I really got down to the nitty gritty. So without further fanfare, here’s how I stopped trying to “train my brain” and actually get shit done:

Get creative:

This is the “goal setting” phase. I used to fear goals because before I could get them out of my mouth, my brain would seize at the impossibility of creating something new from whole cloth. So now, a few times a week, I “brain dump” in my notebook with a rambling list of the minute tasks, things I’ve already done that deserve a pat on the back, long-term stretch goals, anything. I prefer lists, you can write poetry, just do something that empties the mind fully. FULLY. Go to bed with visions of nothingness dancing in your head.

2. Give yourself time to learn:

This year alone I have taught myself how to record, edit and publish podcasts; film, edit and publish video; tackled social media marketing; draft and execute cold emails and calls; and facilitate learning groups and panels, all while also *working*. The solopreneur life ain’t for everyone, but it is for me. It has often felt like drinking from a firehose without even having my cups unpacked, and it can add a little mania to your days while going from totally ignorant to student to novice to expert.

I keep a calendar of what I am learning and often create little “sprints” for myself where I have media I want to read, schedule time to record Very Bad Content that no one will ever see, and then finally in one miraculous moment, all the mise-en-place (did you gather I used to cook?) will go from these scattered ingredients bouncing around your mind to a finished product anyone would be happy to feast on. That first product won’t be great (you mean you’re supposed to look into the camera when you are speaking??) but it will take all the loose ends and tie them nicely.

You only have to learn these skills once, from there, you just hone them every time.

3. Work backwards from your goal in small tasks:

So you’ve identified your goals (see number 1) and gathered the hard skills to get it done (see number 2) and now you’re thinking “I should be exactly where I want to be right now!” Wrong. Having a map and a car don’t automatically whisk you to road-tripping glory.

When your lists are filled with goals and you are overwhelmed with prioritizing them, consider each goal as a series of tasks. For example, if you want to build your social media presence, consider what do you need to generate content, who do you need to start following and engaging with in order to get in front of the right people, do you need to learn Canva or some other standout content creation, and do you have the tools set up to manage your posts? Learn these skills separately, bring them together, and voila! Goal met.

4. Always know your calendar.

People who are constantly frazzled give me serious anxiety. I use a series of methods to always be aware of what I need to do: one is a 4’ wide dry erase calendar that is on the wall immediately to the right of my desk. On it goes all appointments, deadlines, dates, holidays, timekeeping toward goals (ie if I’m in a 6 week “sprint”, reminding myself of how far along I am). At the end of the month I take a picture for prosperity, erase, and start over.

The information on the board comes from my Google calendars, which are synced with my Calendly and other apps, and one day in a fit of frustration I spent some time on a color palette creator and labelled all of the calendars I keep (appointments, content creation, certain clients, etc) so I can visually see what and when I am working on without going blind.

And lastly, as a bullet journaler (albeit a simple one with no fancy calligraphy or adornment), I take time on Sunday and draw my simple weekly spread in which I note my appointments for the week and then use the pages to take handwritten notes from these meetings. This notebook is also where I do the aforementioned Brain Dumps.

5. Unload the nagging tasks: Keep it Visual

What’s my business EIN? Who am I interviewing in three weeks? What are my top three priorities for this quarter? What’s the name of that business certification I always want to go for but haven’t yet?

The crush of thoughts that go through my head each day can be overwhelming (see Brain Dump above) and whatever I find resurfacing over and over again, goes on the wall. Literally. I have a white board that acts as a second brain, and whenever I need to access some common but forgettable information, I turn around and lo! There it is. You can use post-its, butcher paper, whatever you have, but I do recommend spending some time curating your space so that you are set up for success.

At no point in the above list have I suggested you meditate or change your habits (although meditation is rad for other reasons and there are some habits that are more beneficial than others but pry my Bordeaux out of my cold dead hands you bastard). Your brain is your money maker, and I strongly suggest letting it do what it does best. Harnessing the information and turning it into action is the tricky bit, only because these one-size-fits all approaches don’t all-sizes-fit.

You’ve got a gift between those ears of yours; honor it. Nurture it. Give it what it needs, whether that’s a “squirrel notebook” or a whiteboard or a voice recorder or something no other human has concocted- make it your own sherpa and scale the potential you have.