← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
466. Declutter Your Mind: Behavioral Economics for a More Organized Brain
00:45:24
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer explores the art of organizing your brain using behavioral economics principles. Feeling overwhelmed and scattered? You're not alone. Melina shares practical strategies to help streamline...
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- [00:00]
Melina Palmer
Welcome to episode 466 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. Today's episode is all about how to organize your brain with behavioral economics. Ready? Let's get started.
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You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.
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Guest Speaker
Hello.
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Melina Palmer
Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Do you ever just feel overwhelmed?
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Guest Speaker
Like you forget stuff, feel pulled in.
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Melina Palmer
Too many directions with too many priorities, and to dos like you miss things and feel stretched super thin? Maybe you're hearing that and thinking, when do I not feel that way? I hope that isn't the case, of course, but I know we all get this from time to time. Our brains are wired for it. And I have good news. There are some tricks from behavioral economics you can use to help your brain to feel more organized so you get more of the right things done and don't feel so overwhelmed. And that is what we are focusing on in today's episode, which originally aired almost exactly five years ago back in January of 2020. Now, don't forget, links for my top related past episodes and books are waiting for you in the show notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 466. All right, let's talk about how to organize your brain with behavioral economics, starting.
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Guest Speaker
With a little bit of the negative side, what we're trying to avoid. In episode 32 of the podcast, I talked about the overwhelmed brain and its impact on decision making. When your brain is overwhelmed, which happens a lot quicker than you might think, worse decisions are made than otherwise. One of my favorite studies that shows this is what I call the chocolate cake study. Essentially, people were in one room and asked to remember either a two digit or seven digit number while they went through a series of tasks. One of those tasks was to choose their snack for when the experiment was over. Of course, choosing the snack is what the experimenters were really looking at and they found some very interesting results. You might not think remembering an extra few digits matters. I mean, five digits is nothing, seven digits is a phone number and we remember those all the time, so it must be easy to do, right? Well, in the study, those who were remembering the two digit number were much more likely to choose fruit salad as their snack, while those remembering the seven digits were much more likely to choose chocolate cake. Essentially, when the brain gets overwhelmed even by a few extra digits, it makes worse decisions. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you've likely heard me say that the subconscious brain can process about 11 million bits of information per second, while the conscious brain can only do about 40. When you're asked to remember the two digit number, that's easy to accomplish. 12, 47, 95. Whatever the number, it's pretty easy to say it once or twice and then go along with your day without impacting your actions too much. And you can recall that fairly easily. 47, right. But when your number becomes 1247395, your brain has to put a lot more effort into remembering the right numbers in the right order. You're probably going over and over again in your head. 1-247-395-1247-395-1247395. Your conscious brain's 40 bits are bogged down with that big number. And so more things that would normally be handled by the conscious brain and that you would like to have done in your conscious brain are now in the realm of the reward seeking subconscious brain. Which is why the seven digitors were more likely to choose chocolate cake than fruit salad. Subconscious likes sugar. And this isn't the only study to find that clutter, whether it's mental or physical, leads to weight gain. Clutter also increases stress, makes it harder to focus, increases the likelihood you'll procrastinate. It costs time and money and can keep you stuck in the past. I want you to stop for a moment now and look around your working space, assuming it's close by. If not, just think about what it looks like right now. Is it clean, streamlined and organized? Or are there piles of stuff to be sorted through? Drawers stuffed full of unsorted business cards? Knickknacks abound. Could you easily place a paper on top of your desk and write some notes, or would it require a shift to move everything around in clear space? What about your digital clutter? How are those emails and notifications looking? Does the little red dot, if you're a user of Apple products, haunt your dreams? With its insanely high number of tasks for you to accomplish, Is your desktop full of digital files? Can you find things easily? If you were away from your desk and needed a stranger to email something to you from your desktop or files, could you easily tell them how to get it? There's no judgment on any of this. We all have clutter in our lives, and it's a constant battle, but our brains don't like to really be aware of it because it's a big task to get rid of. So helping you to stop and take a moment and think about the clutter that exists is really important to help you see how it's impacting you every day. We are all loss averse as a species. We don't like to get rid of things. Like I said, we want them just in case. And the brain will make reasons for why it it needs that extra stuff around. But unfortunately this doesn't serve us well in life or in business. When it Becomes Clutter if the things physical, mental, emotional, digital surrounding you aren't well organized and are getting out of hand, it's keeping you from reaching your goals. This is why the first step in the brainy mindset course is to work on clutter. Clutter is a tool your brain uses to keep you stuck. How can you reach your goals and do those things that scare you and your brain when you have so many things fighting for your attention? I'll get to that right after I answer these emails. You might say. Even if you aren't consciously paying attention to the clutter, your brain knows where it is and it creates a distraction. Your eyes are constantly scanning the world around you and that clutter and disorganization are keeping your brain preoccupied so it can't do the really fun creative work that would push you forward. Think about it. When your brain is surrounded by clutter, it's constantly distracted looking around, trying to sort the information around it with those 11 million bits of information per second. Oh, what's that? When should I do that? You may lose things, miss meetings, forget to complete an important task, and generally feel exhausted by the end of the day. And if your bedroom is full of clutter, then you're not getting proper rest again, contributing to bad sleep. It's just impacting every facet of your life. The reverse, of course, is that the brain loves organization. Think about when you go on vacation, or are looking at an awesomely organized space on Instagram, or flipping through a magazine. You know what I'm talking about. The ones where people wrap the spines of all their books in an ombre pattern of color so the bookshelf looks like an oasis instead of a hodgepodge. Or. Or how serene you feel in that hotel room with only a few outfits to choose from and not much to look at on the walls. It's peaceful and your brain loves it. Of course, you don't have to turn every space in your home or office into an Instagram influencer's dream to see the benefits. Every little step toward organization and decluttering will be helpful, and making the choice to attack the clutter is the first step. And if you want help with this, I invite you to join the Brainy Mindset course, which starts another wave on the week of January 20th. As I said, we start with decluttering and I can help you with the process. In the first wave of the course, we had people completely revamp their physical spaces, and this was just one little piece of the course. One participant deleted 9,000 emails that had been bogging her down for years within a few hours of that virtual meeting call that we have. And it was so freeing for her and helped make it easier for everybody else to take those big steps as well. We all worked through it together. I tackled five drawers in my home over the process, and I shared before and after pictures with the group. I'm in it with you. As I said, clutter is a sneaky beast. We also have dedicated sessions in that course where I'm helping you set up your organizational tools that I'm going to be talking about today. A couple of those Gantt charts and Trello boards. So you're reaching your goals and getting all the benefits of your organized brain. It's an investment in you that will pay dividends for years to come. Americans waste 9 million hours per day collectively looking for misplaced stuff. At least 30 minutes per person per day on just random things from keys to remotes to shoes and socks, and getting just a little bit more organized where you're maybe only taking 15 or 20 minutes looking for things can really add up and make a huge difference in your life. And as I said, clutter leads to procrastination, weight gain, stress, all kinds of things keeping you from your goals. Let's fix it together. Join the Brainy Mindset course by visiting the Brainy business.com courses right now. Use the code Brainy50OFFB R A I N Y 50OFF for a 50 discount. The link and code are included for you in the show notes, and if you're listening to this a little after it came out, don't worry. People can join as late as early February and there'll be another wave starting in April. Again, all the details are at the brainy business.com courses and use that code brainy50 off for your discount. Now that you understand the damage that a disorganized life is creating for your brain, body and relationships, I want to talk about some of my favorite tools to help combat the clutter and free up your brain. First is the book the Life Changing Magic of Tidying up by Marie Kondo. If you hadn't heard of the Konmari method before January of 2019, when her Netflix special came out, you may have been one of the millions who learned her tips and methods then, but the book came out in 2015. I got the audiobook that same year and was listening to it every day on my commute to and from work while I was prepping for a move. As Kondo says in the book and on the series, many people clear up their clutter in one area and make huge shifts in other areas of their lives. Changing jobs, moving, getting divorced because they find out what matters to them and don't settle for less anymore. I found listening to the audiobook to be very calming and empowering at a time that could otherwise be very stressful. Sitting in Seattle traffic, I listened to it a few times to keep the tips and benefits flowing as I was decluttering my my own home and life. As I said, I got this book as I was prepping for a move from a larger apartment to a smaller apartment, knowing I needed to get rid of some things. Her method is very simple. You go category by category, from clothes to papers, through the list of categories, onto nostalgia, which is the hardest category. So you tackle that last. And you know why, having listened to the episodes and things on that on the podcast. But each category uses the same steps. Essentially, you go through your house and make a huge single pile of everything in the category. You start with clothes. Every single piece of clothing you own in one giant pile. Going to the coat closet, to summer storage, to everything that you have anywhere. It all gets into one pile. Shoes. Everything. Then you take each piece one by one, hold it in your hands. You have to physically hold each thing and ask yourself, does this spark joy? If the answer is no, get rid of it. Only keep things that you see and that make you happier. Things you are thrilled to have around you. Think about what that would be like if every single item, from the little knickknack on your desk to the plates that you have in your cupboard, to the outfits that are hanging in your closet. Every single thing is something you look at and that it makes you happy and full of joy and just so glad that it's part of your life. Can you imagine how different every aspect of your life would be when it's streamlined to that level? I use a modified version of this for myself. And in the brainy mindset course we instead say, is this helping me reach my goal? And I help through the process of identifying what's helping what's not, and how to segment through all of that. The book the Life Changing Magic of Tidying up is great. I personally liked it better than the Netflix series, possibly because I listened to it first and had all the full impact. But if you like the visual, it can be good to start there. Plus it's free to watch a few episodes and just get the gist of how it all works. There's a lot of extra value in the book though, and I would recommend it again. I really enjoyed the audiobook and I know you potentially like listening to things instead of reading them, so I would recommend that and I think. I think it's something worth digging in on. One other really important tip that I want to share. When it comes to decluttering a space and when you're redoing anything, whether it's redoing copy on your website or changing the way that you're thinking about your brand, or like I said, cleaning up your office or anything that you have around, the way that your brain is going to want to think about doing this, if you were just going to start, is this process of taking things away that you don't need and moving them out versus going through a process process of taking everything out first and then thinking about what comes back in. So one of the things that I really work on with people and that I know is part of that Marie Kondo method as well, of putting everything into a big pile, is when you take everything out of the space and then are working on bringing it back into the space, you have really shifted the perspective. The question what you're working on? It's a completely different idea for your brain than the idea of taking things out. So because our brains like cleanliness and order, if you go through that process where you're going to start and say I'm going to take things out, it feels like a lot of work. Our brains are lazy. They don't want to go through that process and take things out. And so you can continually put that off. If you stop and take everything out and then think, do I really need this and do I want it to come back in? Should this be a part of my space? Should this be part of my inbox? Should this be part of my LinkedIn messaging? Whatever it is, if you go through the process in that way, it really shifts the perspective of your brain and makes it easier to get organized when you take everything out first and then decide what comes back in. So that's a real top tip that I have for you. For any sort of decluttering and organizing of any sort of a space. It makes a huge difference. Another book I highly recommend for Decluttering your Brain is Indistractable by Nir Eyal. I am not going to get too much into detail here as I interviewed nir on episode 78 of the podcast. It's linked for you in the Show Notes. I will say he has tips for lots of apps and tools for eliminating the digital clutter in your life. That combines really well with the tips from Marie Kondo, which is more in the physical stuff that's around, and near is getting into some of these other tips as well. And one of those tips, one I absolutely agree with, is to remove notifications from your life or at least modify them. I shared my experience with this in an article I wrote for inc. Which I've linked for you in the Show Notes and it was inspired. After reading Indistractable and talking with near, changing the notifications on your phone is easy and so freeing. It only takes a few seconds and can help you take control of your life, living in an organized style on your own terms. I need to be on social media for my business. You hear me talk about it on every episode. I want to interact with listeners and they contact me on social media, but that doesn't mean I need push notifications constantly bugging me and pulling me from productive work. A while ago I turned off the push notification function on my phone from Facebook, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, email, and pretty much everything else. They don't pop up on my lock screen or have that stupid red bubble of nightmares. I hate that thing. If I can just say I really think it was invented to make people like me crazy. I can't stand having the outstanding item and just knowing it's there. But you know what? It doesn't really bother me at all when the bubble isn't there, when it's not visible. I might have 25 emails sitting in there and for some of you, 25 outstanding emails might sound like a dream, but there might be something going on my Facebook page or it doesn't mean I have to go check it right now. These things are now done when I've scheduled it, or at least when I've made a conscious choice to go in and check things instead of dinging and buzzing and keeping my day constantly disorganized with checking to see what that app might have been wanting to tell me right this minute and see how amazing and important it is when it's usually not very important at all. Just this last week I made another change as I realized I was getting constantly distracted by emails from LinkedIn. Like I said, I had turned off the push notifications on my phone, but the emails, even in my inbox, was just too much. I already have turned off. I don't get emails of notifications of things from Facebook, Twitter or anything else. But LinkedIn was still on and it had a default setting of sending emails for everything. Someone mentioned me on LinkedIn, someone else viewed my profile, someone else sent a message on and on my email. As I said and alluded to, it's pretty darn clean these days. So when one of those emails came into my inbox, it was very obvious and made me jump over immediately to see what was going on way too many times a day to feel good about. So when I noticed it as a problem, I stopped right then, got a combat time discounting and I took three minutes and changed the settings. My rule of thumb in this process is to see what it says the options are just to make sure if there's anything I really should be getting, but otherwise I just turn off everything. I can always go back and turn something on if I'm missing a notification. That would be important. But you know what? So far I haven't really missed any of it. I still go check LinkedIn daily or you know, a few times a day if I'm being honest. But it's on my time and feel so much calmer and more intentional. And then I can check all 10 messages and respond to them that came in since the last time I was in there. Instead of going one at a time as I get a notification saying check this message, check this message, check that message. Doesn't it just sound calmer to go in when you're being intentional? It's so much better. So if you're currently getting a lot of notifications on your phone or computer, the thought of removing those will likely cause you stress. It did for me. I had that. But what if I miss something feeling? That's the loss aversion talking and it doesn't need to stop you. I implore you. I recommend definitely you should try doing this to help declutter your brain. You're going to be amazed at how much more productive and focused you can be when you remove notifications. Seriously, pause the episode. Go do it right now. And while you're at it. Tag me on social media when you're turning off those notification settings to let me know you're taking the action again. I'm the brainy biz and that way I can follow up in a few days or a week and see just how much you love it. Don't worry, I'll wait while you go change those welcome back. So far we've talked about the negative impact acts of clutter and disorganization on the brain, as well as the benefits of getting focused and organized. I talked about a couple books and gave tips for removing notifications so your brain can focus. The next tool I've learned to love is Focus Mode from Word. Have you used this? It's awesome. If you need to write a lot of content like me, you spend a lot of time in Word and it's easy to get distracted. There's a lot to pull focus away, but if you use Focus Mode, which is at the bottom of the screen in the gray footer bar, it says Focus and there's a little square icon to the left of it. I'm going to share an image or maybe a video on social media to show you how it works and what it looks like. But once you click that Focus Mode, it blacks out everything except for the document you're working on. And it doesn't have all the stuff on the top, save icons and all the words and the things in the footer and the word count and page numbers. It all just goes away. Just the white simulated paper on a black background. Nothing to pull focus. I use this when I'm writing episodes. Yes, I'm using it now, or articles or other times when I don't want to get sucked into an Internet rabbit hole, which I'm really good at doing. It's it seems weird when you aren't experiencing it, but your brain is constantly pulling focus and looking at other stuff. If you remove it from your sight, you really just stop thinking about it. If you travel a lot like me, you may have tried to write on the plane. I do this all the time now because it can be really productive when there's nothing else to do. It's amazing how I can keep myself entertained. On the flight out to Hawaii a few weeks ago, I wrote five first drafts of articles for Ink and got a few other tasks done and still had time to watch some of my shows. Focus Mode is kind of like that, but whenever you want, it's even better because you just can't see anything. Like I said, no page numbers no counts, just text. You really lose track of time and how much you've written. It's great. One of the things you can't do is go find those sources, which is why this is so appealing for me. So as I write things out, I make a note in the text that has parentheses with the word link in all caps for when I want to add a source or go back and look something up. So they're really easy for me to go find, either in a search and replace or something like that, but they don't need to pull me out to find the source right this minute. After 18 months plus of doing a weekly podcast, I know that looking for sources is the the biggest time suck and rabbit hole generator of my life. I could get sucked into a research paper or article or a TED Talk faster than you can blink and then two hours later there's still writing to be done. Saying link there in all caps means I can go back later and find that source, which I know I have somewhere without the distraction in the moment. Focus mode from Word is super cool and an easy little tidbit to keep you on track and accomplish those must do items of the day without having to be stuck on a plane with no wi fi. Another thing I use to keep focused and productive is the time timer. This little clock is awesome and has a visual component to help track time. Mine sits on my desk. It's maybe 4 inches tall and it can be set for up to an hour. When you turn the dial, it shows the time that's left in a big red circle. So if I set it for one hour, the red circle is complete, goes all the way around, Whereas it's at 3/4 if there's 45 minutes left to go. It can also sit behind my computer. Sometimes I move it so that I will only know that the time is up when it beeps. And it can also be set to not beep if that would pull me out of focus. And the goal is to just get started but know that I have a limit. But ideally I'll just keep writing instead of stopping after 20 minutes or whatever I set. I've always been one of those people who likes to reward myself for little tasks. When I was in school it may have been once I finish reading this chapter, I'll allow myself to go get a snack or while working. It could be that I can't check social media until I've written five pages or when running intervals, I might say I can walk when this song ends or the chorus starts for work Focus the time timer does a few things. First, let's say I want to commit to writing instead of saying I'm going to sit and write. No distractions this time, which is hard to stick to because it feels really indefinite. If instead I say I'm going to write for 20 minutes and set the timer, it feels a lot easier to focus and I don't have to think about how long it's been because I'm waiting for a timer to ding. If I do have that are we there yet? Moment, I can glance up and see how much red is left. Is it a sliver or half a pie? This lets me get a feeling for how long I've been doing the task and how much time is left left in my subconscious processing, which is very visual. Instead of engaging my conscious brain about how many minutes are left, how many minutes it's been, and pulling myself out of that productive mode. If I have thoughts of I wonder what's on Instagram, I can say I'll check when the timer goes off and easily dismiss it because I know it isn't that far away. When it does get to be time to get my reward watching cookie frosting videos on Instagram, let's say I can set the time timer for however long I want to allow myself for the break. Maybe it's seven minutes. Or if I want to reward my work with a different form of work, responding to comments on social media and doing some new posts. Then I get 30 minutes for the task. I get to set the rules and be in control, which is awesome. I mentioned running a little bit earlier and I just thought of another way that this ties in. When I first started running years ago, I was having a really hard time going for more than 30 minutes straight without getting tired and having to walk for a bit. It was frustrating and demotivating and I mentioned to a friend of mine who ran a lot of really long races that I didn't know how I would get to a longer timeframe and that I was getting discouraged and feeling like I hit my limit, that I had maxed out on my running abilities. And she told me about this 10:1 method which a lot of even professional long distance runners use. Essentially you make the decision in advance that you'll run for 10 minutes and then walk for one minute and then repeat until you get the full distance. You can also do 5:1 or 7:1 or whatever works for you because it's a decision you made in advance. It's empowering. Instead of feeling like you failed when you have to walk and this is a strategy that can help get you there. It completely changed my running. I could pretty quickly do seven, eight or nine miles and was running for two hours without breaking a mental sweat. It felt awesome. And again, the only difference was a little planning and choice up front. I was stopping because I planned to stop and walk instead of because I can't physically go any further. And I failed because I can't run the whole way. You can implement that method in any area of your life. Making the decision in advance makes all the difference. The next tool I really love is the snooze function for Gmail. I don't know if other email clients have this, but if they do, you should absolutely use it as you know a cluttered inbox full of tasks and to dos and things to follow up on tomorrow or three months from now is terrible for your brain. It it's distracting and keeps you in a constant state of overwhelm, wondering if you missed something and what's down there below the scroll or the second page or oh, I don't know how many pages could be there, but the snooze function allows me to determine when I want to tackle an item and move it so it's out of my inbox and will only come back in at the set time. I've used this for everything from will you follow up with me at the end of March type of messages to knowing my own schedule and that I can't start on a project until next Thursday, so I'll just snooze it until then. The functionality has some default options. Snooze until Monday, tomorrow, or two days from now at 8am and you can easily set up other days and times with just a few clicks. It takes seconds to snooze something. It's an easy thing to do from a phone or online, so I do this a lot while I'm traveling. If I know I can't respond to an email until I get back, I can just snooze it until then. It's validation that I made a choice. I will respond to this on Thursday so it doesn't need to impact my brain until then. Anything small is handled in the moment when I'm in my email. Remember, no push notifications here, but those other things that I can't get to now or shouldn't work on until I finish. My priority of today or tomorrow is snoozed until it should then be the top priority. Beware of using the default settings too much and know that you'll find your flow over time if you start using this. If you never take the time to answer or do any of the things that are in the list and you just keep snoozing everything, you might start Monday morning to 45 snoozed emails to respond to. Not great on your brain. So when you feel inclined to snooze them again and again, consider when you can tackle them. Break them up into segments like I'll do five a day until they're done and these are the most important five so I snooze those till tomorrow and then the next next five and the next five so you can get to the other side and take a moment to consider those things. You just keep snoozing. Never really get to do they really need to get done or are they just a distraction? It's okay to let go of things you don't want to or can't do, knowing of course that if they're assignments from your boss or something, you can't always just snooze them into oblivion. But it can mean it's worth having a conversation about or reassessing priorities. If you've snoozed something more than twice, ask yourself why am I not doing this and does it really matter? If the answer is yes, it matters and you can figure out why you're not doing it, maybe it's just too big of a task so you need to break it down. You can make it a priority and start working on it the next day and I'm going to give you some tips here in the next section for breaking that down. If it is not something that matters, just find a way to get rid of it. As Elsa said, let it go. You can tell I have a three year old girl in the house. Snooze functionality on Gmail helps you weed out unnecessary clutter in your email inbox and I really love it. Highly recommend it. It's a great tool. The last two things I'm going to talk about are Gantt Charts and Trello. First is the Gantt Chart which is spelled G A N T T. That's essentially a visual tracking system that lets you sort through your tasks and see what is upco. I give my clients and people in the brainy mindset course templates I've set up in Excel that they can easily fill in with their to do's. I've used these for years in running marketing departments and just any sorts of projects. They're really great and as I said, there's a whole dedicated space to the charts and things in the Brainy Mindset course. A Gantt chart is a helpful tool because it allows you to see what's coming up and where you might have overlap in the way that it kind of visually stacks things. What we work through in the course is picking one goal you have in the next, say 90 days. And we've already narrowed down the goals at this point in the course. This could be anything from Start a podcast to Declutter My Office, or really anything. The next task for the person to do is to look at all the actual days that are available in those 90 days ahead. So are you working weekends on this project or are you having big gaps? Are the kids going to be home early on a certain day and you're not going to get any of these extra tasks done? Or do you have a work trip where you're not going to get things done and go through that process to find the true number of days you have over those next 90 to make progress on your goal? Let's say it's 65 now. You can break your big goal into the 65 steps it will take to get there and assign one to each day. There are ways to categories and use colors for tracking to make it easier that I recommend when walking people through this, but no matter how you do it, it's really pretty darn simple. As I asked on the behavioral change episode, would you rather look back 90 days from now and say I did a lot of little things but didn't make much progress? Essentially you just tread water. Or would you like to say I did one thing at a time and I accomplished this totally awesome thing? The latter me too. Narrowing your goals, removing the clutter around them, and then aligning your to do's with something like a Gantt chart can really help you do that. Or even a physical to do list or notification in your email of the one thing to do today. You could send yourself a bunch of emails and snooze them all. That can help you check things off the list. There are lots of ways to make progress here and you can find the one that works best for you. The big thing is to split that big giant goal into its smallest components and only have one per day. And if you get one done and then you have more time to do tomorrow's great, you know you can get a couple extra things done, but you're not forcing yourself to do that. You're not looking for that. It's about taking that big thing into small components so you can Just do it bite by bite, chunk by chunk. That's the most critical part. You don't try to eat the elephant without a plan and know that the Be Thoughtful notebooks will really, really help with this when they come out soon. Get on the list to be notified for when they're available using the form in the show notes atthe brainy business.com 83 Last is Trello. Oh Trello, how I love thee. Trello is awesome and it has totally changed the way I approach my days, my life, my clutter and my business. However, it takes a lot of effort to set up properly so it does everything you want it to do. It's very customizable when you get started. It's nothing. A very basic tool with endless possibilities. If you want to really commit to this organizing your brain and life thing, Trello is a fantastic solution and it's very affordable if you are going to get the paid version, which I really recommend if you're really jumping into it. But you need to be ready to plan and invest the time and energy into the setup or else it's just going to be a waste of your time. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Trello now, in case you aren't familiar, it's just an online system where you can set up a board that's themed in some way with different lists and cards go on each list. The cards can move between lists and boards easily as they move through various steps maybe. And when you're on the paid version you can have what they call Power Ups and this really great tool called Butler which automates stuff for you. And automating things is amazing and really great for your brain so it isn't stuck in your mental space. Remembering all the junk you have to do for routine tasks is keeping you stuck. Trello can help turn that into a process that reminds you of the next step up so you don't have to remember anything. I have a ton of Trello boards and more are coming as time goes on. It's a great way to get things out of my brain and desk and my phone. I take lots of photos when I'm out of things I want to work on later or remember for a future post or episode. I can get all of that out of my head and into a place I can easily look up when I'm ready for it or be reminded about at exactly the right time. Here are a few things I have on Trello to show you some examples of how this really works. So I have a board for all of my content which has different lists for the areas where that content is going, podcast episodes, ink articles, social posts, items for courses. This board can be accessed by me and my intern virtual assistant and it's nicely set up so when she graduates and moves on to a full time job, which I know is a serious possibility pretty soon it isn't like everything we figured out and all the processes are lost in her email somewhere. They are on the board and I can easily assign access to another person at any time. So I put together a card called Tasks on the podcast list of the content board which has 49 different things that need to happen for each episode of the podcast. It has everything from choose topic and write outline to record episode, which is separate from post episode for editing. And there's still another task of approve edited episode and decide if a worksheet is needed and create worksheet granular people. We're talking granular. When you break it out this way, it's a bit impressive to see all the things you're doing and trying to remember. Why do I need to try and constantly remember where things are when I can just check them off the list when they're completed In Trello? This also means anyone who has access to the board can see what's already been done and what's left on the to do list. So that way you're not having to email me and say did you do this yet? You can just look and see it's done. Easy. I set up Butler so when I set up a new card on the podcast list, it automatically adds all those 49 checklist items so I don't have to do that either. I have a similar setup on my CRM board. There is a speaking leads list and a speaking confirmed list. When a card moves from the leads list to a confirmed speaking list, it gets a bunch of tasks automatically assigned to it again. I had to think through all of these up front once and plan it all, but it's so worth it. This has everything from create invoice for deposit to receive signed contract which I I can attach into the card on Trello for easy access. It also has book flight and send email asking when slides are due to send thank you after event. I also have a this week board for both myself and my virtual assistant where the lists are the days of the week and there's a parking lot list for things that are yet to be sorted. I have different cards on each of the days and can easily see when things are getting crazy and can very easily. Very easily move things from one list to another. Butler is also set up to scan all of my various boards, the CRM, the content, topic, ideas, networking, whatever. It can look through all of those and I've set it up that every Friday morning it's going to scan every single board and find any cards with a due date of the following week and move them to the parking lot list on the this Week Molina board. So I can schedule out the entire next week on the Friday before and theoretically everything I've intended to do next week will pop up without me having to dig around for it. From a task I set up yesterday to a reminder to follow up with someone three months ago, it all comes up. I also have boards for meal planning and training for the half marathon I'm going to be doing in August and finding articles of interest that I like and want to include in content and templates for doing pricing projects for clients. So there's a standard deliverable every time. Again, it's awesome. It has some other cool features where you can use the app to add things really easy and it's all very dynamic so if I change something on my phone it moves instantly on the desktop version as well. And every board has an email address so I have them all saved in my contacts as things like Trello Content or Trello Family and then I can forward emails directly to the board for sorting later and again get them out of my inbox and we've made it to the end. We talked about the negative impact of clutter and disorganization, what it has on the brain, as well as the benefits. So many benefits of having organization throughout your life. Everything from weight loss to less stress and increased productivity and better sleep. It's so important and can help you smash through goals like you wouldn't believe. And then I walked through a bunch of my tips and things I use to keep organized. I'm sure it doesn't surprise you to know I've got a lot going on from one day to the next and if I wasn't organized I would let a lot of people down and not be very successful as I'm looking to scale my business and do even more. Systems and organization are critical. It's going to matter both for keeping my tasks going as well as bringing on new staff and having systems in place and things that are ready to go, making it really easy to know what's being delegated and what's available. It's just really great to have all this organization and things set up so.
- [43:22]
Melina Palmer
What got your brain buzzing as you learned about organizing your brain with behavioral economics today? For me, I haven't done a whole lot of episodes like this one with collected advice on a particular topic, so I would love to hear what you think of it. Is this something we should do more of? If so, what topics would you like to hear about? What questions can I answer for you with insights from behavioral economics? Come share it with me on social media. You can find me as the Brainy Biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. And of course, feel free to email me melinathebrainybusiness.com as well. And if one of the things you were thinking about is how to organize.
- [44:02]
Guest Speaker
Your tasks at work to be happier.
- [44:04]
Melina Palmer
And more effective, you're in luck. The next episode of the podcast is my conversation with Dr. Polly Kang, one of the researchers who has discovered the Streak End Effect, which has insights on how to best structure your own days and those of your teams to reduce turnover and have everyone be happier at work. Fantastic. As we close out the show, don't forget about those show notes with links to my top related past episodes and books and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 466 and just like that, episode 466 on organizing your brain with behavioral economics is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Dr. Polly King to discuss her work on the Streak End rule. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.
- [45:07]
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit the Brainy business dot com.