“It has been estimated that the average person has sixty thousand separate thoughts each and every day.” – Wayne W. Dyer.
Most of us have minds that race night and day and if you’re a writer a major chunk of your sixty thousand thoughts probably revolve around your writing. It’s hard to take a break from the plot of your novel or the concept of your still-under-construction poem. As a writer, you’ve probably had trouble concentrating in a meeting or falling asleep at night because you can’t seem to disengage from the 3 a.m. revelations or the ideas you get just when you’re about to fall asleep. Suddenly, you’re wide awake groping for writing implements and the next thing you know, the sun is up and you have to deal with life as one of the walking dead.
Along with the creative furor in your brain, your mind is chattering to you about job concerns, laundry that needs doing, dinner that needs cooking, grocery lists, bills to pay, errands to run, world peace…
In short, you’re taking the express lane to Town Burnout.
Been there, done that. Sometimes, you just have to slow your brain down because the grueling pace of your thoughts can hurt your productivity by fragmenting your concentration and affecting the quality of your writing.
Here are three ways I use to help me haul the brakes on a mind that won’t stop chugging a mile a minute:
Read!
Reading is a great way to slow down and interrupt the thoughts crowding and clambering over each other in your head. Entering the realm of a book takes you out of your present and disrupts the thoughts on loop in your mind. Over the years, I’ve realized reading is the panacea for pretty much all writing ills.
Listening to music also helps.
Meditate
You don’t have to try advanced meditation, count your breaths or chant a personal mantra over and over again. It can be as simple as finding a quiet space and focusing on the gaps between your thoughts, trying to lengthen the time between one thought and the other. Introduce silence in your mind as an intervention to the stream-of-consciousness jostling in your brain. Silence invites you to slip beneath the surface of buzzing brain activity and find a sense of stillness. Oftentimes, you can tap into a greater pool of creativity by retreating to your inner center.
Declutter
Writing can come from a place of chaos. Sustained writing, however, comes from a place of discipline. Train your mind to sift through important and unimportant thoughts. Believe it or not, you can train your mind to choose the right thoughts for the right time. If it’s time for writing, then entertain only writing relevant thoughts and firmly push the rest out of your head. It is difficult in the beginning, disentangling writing thoughts from non-writing thoughts, but with time and practice it becomes easier.
I still struggle with this and have to make a conscious effort to practice these tips but they work for me. I hope they help you navigate the warzone of brain overdrive and bring you to peace.
Until next week! 🙂
dsmcknight
Great tips – I’m going to try them.
Zakia R. Khwaja
Thank you! Do let us know if they worked for you! 🙂
Q. M. Sidd
A very good read.
Zakia R. Khwaja
Thank you! 🙂
Seemeen Saadat
Great advice!
andrewknighton
I’m also a big fan of meditation/mindfulness practices, getting the brain settled. I find that something often emerges during those moments, something subconscious behind the diverse background chatter, and acknowledging it helps me to move on to a more productive state.
Same with decluttering. I’m in the process of some serious physical decluttering around the house, in part because it reduces my mental clutter.
Lux
OMG this is so helpful! I sometimes even can’t shut my thoughts off when I sleep. So it’s like half-sleeping really. I’m lying there, my body asleep but my mind is still on full blast! Ugh!