You can have a full day ahead of you and still feel behind before breakfast. Your mind is full of lots of things. You might be thinking about your emails and a call you need to make. You might be thinking about tasks you didn’t finish yesterday. None of these thoughts may seem urgent, but together they can make it hard to get anything done.
The problem isn’t that you have too much to do. It’s that you’re trying to remember too much at once.
Think about what happens when you’re working on a report and remember that your car needs an oil change. You tell yourself you’ll deal with it later. Then you wonder whether the repair shop is open. Before you know it, the report has to wait.
The car may not be the problem. The problem is that your mind keeps asking you to remember it.
This happens with small tasks, too. You remember you need to return a book or call someone with a question. Each thought takes a little space. Soon, you’re spending more time trying to keep track of your life than actually living it.
I’ve found that one of the best ways to deal with this is to get those thoughts out of your head. Write them down. Put them in a task list, a notebook, or a note on your phone. The tool matters less than having a place you trust.
Once something is written down, you don’t have to keep reminding yourself about it. You can look at your list when you’re ready to decide what comes next.
That doesn’t mean every thought needs to become a task. Some things are just reminders. Others are ideas you may want to explore later. You might think about taking a class, changing your work routine, or planning a trip. You don’t need to act on those ideas today. You need a place to keep them.
The key is to separate remembering from doing.
When you sit down to work, your job is to focus on the task in front of you. Your task list should hold the other things you need to remember. If you keep stopping to think about them, you’re asking your mind to do two jobs at once.
There’s another benefit to getting things out of your head. You can see what really matters. A list may show that you have three things that need attention today and ten things that can wait. That’s much easier to deal with than a cloud of worries.
You may also find that some things don’t need to be done at all. Once you write them down, they lose some of their power. You can decide what deserves your time and what doesn’t.
Your mind is a great place for ideas. It’s not a great place to store every idea or task you need to do.
Giving those things a place outside your head means you will have more room to think, and you’ll get more done.
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Don’t Forget Your Next Great Idea
If you are seeking to improve your level of productivity, check out my online course, “Pathway to Productivity and Better Time Management“
Dave Edwards Media 
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