Glorious loops
How to solve the problem of unresolved tasks / Issue 1,156
Oh, hi friends!
Too many open loops can feel paralyzing.
You remember a task, but forget to write it down. Open loop.
You open an email, but don’t have the time, bandwidth, or keyboard you need to respond, so you close it…then think about it constantly until it’s resolved. Open loop.
Here’s one little fix for the open loops:
Don’t start it until you can finish it.
That means waiting to open the email or text until you know you have time to respond.
Waiting until you have time to take action.
This is actually very hard to do!
We want to see what’s new and what’s next, so we open a bunch of loops, and then they dangle and flop around.
And these tasks become less appealing to do, because they’re no longer shiny and new.
One solution, as we go through our days, is to take a beat and ask:
Do I have the capacity to see this through right now?
If I don’t have the capacity, when can I do it instead?
Don’t start it until you can finish it.
A small plan.
Fewer open loops.
Clarity.
While I eventually sort all my email into broad categories, the most helpful is my "To Read" folder. Upon receipt, I immediately transfer all my emails that are just to be read - like newsletters and ads - to that folder and only keep the important, "business" emails in my inbox. It really helps with the swirling items in my brain to put those items in a spot until I have the time to read them. An additional assist is to read them on Apple Mail where I can arrange them according to sender as opposed to GMail where the email is arranged in date order. Spoiler alert - sometimes I just delete swaths of them without reading! :D