Overcome Procrastination and Reduce Mental Stress: How to Use Attention and Memory to Get Things Off Your Mental “To Do” List

By Dr. Larina Kase

You know that feeling when you can’t get anything done even though you’re trying your best? Chances are, it’s because you have too much on your mind.

You’re not intentionally procrastinating, in fact, you may be accomplishing some things, just not the right things. You feel scattered.

The primary cause of mental stress is that we constantly have a running list of all the things that we need to do in our minds. These things weigh on us and we worry about them. We worry that we’ll forget them and we wonder when we’ll get to them.

Unfortunately we remember these things at the most inopportune times when we can’t or shouldn’t act on them. So we continue to be stressed out by them.

Overcoming Procrastination: First, Understand How Memory Works

When we pay attention to a piece of information, it enters our short-term memory. Typically we can only hold 5-9 pieces of simple information in our short-term memory. If this information is not acted on or encoded it goes away.

To keep information available we need to get it into working memory. Working memory is like a vehicle that transports information from short-term into long-term memory. Working memory will transport something that fits into an existing memory.

Our minds are like filing cabinets, so if there is already a file for a new piece of information, working memory can deposit it there. Working memory also transports information that is rehearsed or manipulated. Let’s say that you want to remember someone’s name who you meet at a networking event. If I think, “His name was John and he’s wearing a blue shirt- that reminds me of my husband John who has blue eyes,” I’ll likely remember his name because I engaged working memory.

Retrieving Info from Long Term Memory

Once you get information into long-term memory, you’ve made progress, but then you have to get it out.

Working memory files information into long-term memory. These files are not easily accessed—we often need reminders. And it’s easier and more efficient to recognize something that to try to recall it from scratch.

There are two important lessons to learn from the way that our memories work. First, we can’t expect to recall something when we need to. We may not have even gotten that piece of information into long-term memory and even if we did, it can be tough to recall it.

Second, getting ourselves to take action works similarly to how memory works. Just as we can only remember so much, we can only do so much, and we can’t rely on ourselves to remember what we need to do when we need to do it.

The Key to Stress Reduction

We need to have a system for organizing material as it comes at us, and this system can’t be in our heads. Similarly, we need to have a system for taking action so that we regularly do so. It can be as simple as filing thoughts into easily accessible documents on your computer and setting up a series of reminders for action in Outlook.

BIO
Larina Kase, PsyD, MBA is a business psychologist and New York Times bestselling author who helps professionals achieve the things they can’t (but wish they could). Get her popular monthly publication “Raise the Bar- The New Science of Personal Development” at www.pascoaching.com/raisethebar

Keywords
Mental stress, to do list, procrastinating, overcome procrastination, overcoming procrastination