Forget water, food, Tylenol, massages, coffee, exercise or chocolate. If you’re like me, you’ve tried all of these and many more ways to get rid of a nagging headache. Often, none of these methods work. The reason they don’t work is that our brain is asking us to solve the root cause, not the symptom. You see, the headache is just a symptom of the underlying stress. I’ve come to realize that, oftentimes, the headache I’m having is a result of feeling overwhelmed with all the “unfinished business” on my mind.

Open Loops - Mow the Lawn

An open loop is anything we think about that is unfinished or not the way it should be. The report that’s due, maintenance on the car, the broken toaster, a past due bill, a birthday phonecall to a friend, an email that hasn’t been read - these are all open loops. All of these things take up space on our brain until we resolve them. That’s where the power of completion comes in.

Completion - The Magic Pill

When open loops become so overwhelming that our brains start to hurt, we’ve got problems. The only solution we have is to start closing those open loops. We do that by first finding out exactly what those open loops are. This usually involves a massive brainstorm session to get things off our minds and on to paper. Once you’ve captured everything thats nagging you, you’ll notice an immediate sense of relief. Often this is enough to rid us of our headache. The next step, is to start making decisions about each of the open loops. Should this even be on my mind? What should I do about it? What is the next action I can take to start the process of completion? Can I delegate this to someone else? These are all questions we’ll be asking ourselves.

Visual Clutter

Visual clutter refers to physical objects in our environment that command our attention because they create visual reminders of that particular open loop. For example, any clothes that we see just lying around create visual open loops because our brain knows they should be in the closet, a drawer, or in the laundry basket. Take all the things that need to be thrown away or given away and get rid of them. It doesn’t seem like a big deal to many people, however, these things are visual clutter and take up so much of our attention. Once you start throwing away broken VCRs, old cassette tapes, and donating old clothes, you’ll feel the magic pill of completion start to make its way through your bloodstream and eventually to your brain.

Pick up David Allen’s, Getting Things Done for more info on open loops and getting rid of the mental strain of keeping those open loops stored in our brain. Oooh… that rhymes.