Organising My Mental Priorities
We’ve been in our house for just over two years now. Our street is a part of a brand new suburb, and a vast majority of our neighbours are in the same demographic as us who are building their first home.
But I noticed that many of my neighbours park their cars along the sidewalk or in the driveway. Many of them don’t use their garage to park their cars.
When I’ve gone out for walks and taken a sneakly peak into their garage, I’ve observed that their garages are full of stuff taking up the space where their car should be parked.
I’ve been adamant that I wanted to use my garage to park my car, and not primarily for storage. To accomplish this, I’ve done a few things.
Firstly I got rid of junk and stuff I didn’t need.
Secondly, I organised what was left over into shelves and hooks on the walls to ensure there was enough room to park my car.
And thankfully I’ve been about to manage this!
I’ve noticed parallels in my own mindset towards making space and time for studying the Bible. Very often I feel like I don’t have the capacity or time to do any sort of personal studies. Yet the garage of my mind is filled with all kinds of junk and very disorganised.
So my priorities are just sitting outside of the mind instead.
Here are some things I’ve tried to help organise my priorities and create space for studying the Bible.
Reduce Inputs
Just like all the junk that my neighbours have in their garage, I also have a lot of unneccesary inputs going into my brain. I get all sorts of information from the following sources
Instagram
Youtube
Podcasts
Audiobooks
eBooks
Some of these are intentionally providing me with information (content from podcasts and books), and some of them are passively flooding me with information (eg, Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts). Although not all the inputs are bad, its the overall volume that is clogging up my brian and mental capacity.
I’ve tried to change this by significantly reducing the amount of social media I consume, and reduce the amount of podcasts I listen to. By bringing down the levels of pure content I’m receiving, I’ve started to reduce the mental junk that fills my mind.
Organise Thoughts
Even after reducing the total number of inputs, I’ve tried to capture and organise what it is that I am learning from them. I do this by using the note taking app Notion, and using a little notebook to write down things as I go along.
Whats great about this is it organises all of the inputs a lot more, and also helps motivate me to keep the volume of information down if I now have to process and write down what it is that I’m learning.
And as I’m taking notes into some sort of organised structure, I’m much more intentional about what I’m writing down and where that fits.
Now that my mental inputs have been cleared out and I’m organising whats left, I can start to use my brain for some useful things.
By attempting this I’ve found it a bit easier to be aware of the distractions that pull me away from my goals. And having systems and structure in place with taking notes of what I’m learning is helping a lot.
But I’ve noticed bad habits have started to creep back in. So this is definitely something I’ll have to refine further and work on!
Have a try for yourself! Check out this blog post for some ideas on how to find out where some of your distractions may be coming from - https://www.bibleroadmaps.com/blog/the-ultimate-selfie-filter