Can You Defrag Your Hard Drive?

If you’re technologically inclined, you may be able to do this on your computer, but defragging your OWN hard drive is a whole other (gray) matter!

As we go through life, our mind saves things – aka memories, thoughts, ideas. Lots of them! Some of them are precious and we revisit them time and again. But then there are the “frags” that pop up out of nowhere, feeling like the clutter you’d find in the attic. You entertain them for a moment, and then pause to wonder why they are still rattling around up there.

You know what I’m talking about…your landline phone number you haven’t had since the 8th grade…you can whip that out like a reflex! Yet, that password you reset yesterday? GONE!

Whether you’re in a leadership role with high-level responsibilities, or working on projects that require meticulous focus, or a busy parent working full-time and going to school, you need all the RAM you can get in that hard drive in your head. Distraction and lack of focus can be frustrating, and can even impede progress toward our goals.

Is there a way to round up all the random fragments and put them somewhere, just holding on to what is relevant and valuable to you now? Unfortunately I’ve yet to develop a surefire process guaranteed to work – maybe someday I can make that claim! For now, I’d suggest the following to curate the “frags” and pull together the more timely and relevant things related to your goals and priorities:

  • Start a special journal (written, video, audio – whatever you like) to capture those random thoughts and memories when they come up. If you can give them somewhere else to “live”, your mind may feel able to let it go. Remember when you used to write down all your passwords somewhere? They never stuck in your head, did they? Same theory here.
  • The key here is, you don’t go back through this repository of randomness often or regularly. Let it collect dust on the shelf along with all those training binders you’ve been saving for the past decade, the pages of which haven’t seen daylight since you walked out of the session.
  • Now for the priorities and goals: journaling regularly AND revisiting what you document on a regular basis will help you make progress and continue to build on it. Have a space to write those brilliant ideas down so you can come back to them. Reflect on what you accomplished related to your goals at the end of the day, and use that to set your priorities for the next day, for example.
  • If there is something you DO want to be sure you hold on to, document it! Record it, take a photo, write it down. Get as much detail as you can, because you never know what “frags” your mind will decide to hold on to on its own!

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