How To NOT Do All The Things and Still Be Great

A couple years ago the Guardian published a comic strip by an anonymous French author that was all about the mental load of running a family.  In a nutshell, the piece explained that mental load is the total sum of all the invisible work you do to manage the “remembering of all the things” in your household.

Mental Load At Home

As the comic strip pointed out, often times, it’s usually one partner (most often women)  that is designated by default as the house manager. She is the one that supposed to know what needs to be done and when.  This partner must remember that the bathroom needs toilet paper, a plumber needs to be scheduled to stop a leaking faucet, and the laundry needs to be done.

In addition to bearing the mental load of managing these tasks, this partner is often expected to execute a large portion of the household responsibilities as well.  So she becomes the project manager and the key team member even though management is a full-time job on its own.

Mental Load At Work

The mental load phenomenon exists at work too.  In the office, mental load is made up of all the unrecognized responsibilities that some employees (often women here too) take on to keep the group running like a well-oiled machine. Some of this work includes coordinating celebratory events and activities.  

Other times mental load at work is a result of your state of being particularly if you are a person of color.   Often the unspoken rules of the workplace require that employees of color make their white colleagues feel like they are in a “safe space” to express their feelings about race without the threat of offending them.  Meanwhile, the employee of color is left to sort out her own feelings about her coworker’s comments and the fact that she is responsible for making her colleague feel comfortable enough to say them.

4 Tips For Managing Mental Load

No matter whether you are the manager of “all the things” at home or at work, mental load costs you in time, creativity, and productivity.  Your mind needs space to breathe and roam if it is to come up with the visionary ideas you need as an entrepreneur.

So how do you ease mental load so that you can be great?  You give yourself permission to stop doing all the things to get more done. Here are some tips on how:

Stop Running Errands – Amazon Subscribe-and-Save, Shipt, Instacart, and Task Rabbit are the names of just a few of the services that will do the bulk of your errand work for you.  

Instead of trying to remember when to pick up a new toothbrush, use Amazon Subscribe-and-Save to automate those routine tasks for you.  Once you have a system set up for errands that doesn’t include your mental labor, you are free to use your energy for other things.

Simplify Your Wardrobe – one of my favorite quotes on a simplified wardrobe comes from Barack Obama when he was describing the reason why he only has black and blue suits.  Here’s the quote:

“I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing because I have too many other decisions to make. You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”

I love clothes as much as the next person, but when I’m trying to be productive during the week, my clothing choice is trivial.  So I follow President Obama’s advice.

I pared down my workweek wardrobe to a few pieces that I rotate through when I am working at home. By doing this, I’m not bogged down by the mental effort necessary to make clothing decisions.  You can also use styling services like Stitch Fix and Trunk Club to streamline your clothing choices as well.

Corral Your Reading – We are all bombarded by content every day.  Some of it we plan to read, and other things turn out to be a welcome distraction when we need a break.  But if you want to avoid mental overload, you need to corral your daily reading. Apps like Feedly and Press Reader aggregate content and prevent the overwhelm associated with information overload.  (If you want more tips about dealing with electronic content, check out my post on that very topic here.

Get An Assistant –  Here’s the thing. With services like Fancy Hands, Get Friday, Task Rabbit, and Fiverr where you can literally hire someone for $5, there is no reason not to have an assistant. With an assistant, you can assign your secondary role as the executor of all things to someone else. This means less overwhelm and overload.

A dedicated virtual assistant with an American based company starts as low as $30/month. That’s less than the cost of dinner out with a much better rate of return. You’ll be amazed at how much stress is lifted once you get help. Just do it.

Now that I have you thinking about your mental load, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you might begin to ease some of that stress. Let me know your ideas for making your mental load lighter in the comments below.