🎤 PODCAST • Mental Overload ~ The cure for mental overload is to think on paper - a short interview with presenter Jean Moroney
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You know, you look at your own life and you say, I just want to be happy and I don't know why I don't feel happy.

And I look at my daily schedule and I'm on overload. I've got the kids to take care of. I've got my elderly parents. I'm going back to school. I want to get a graduate degree. And I'm trying to work part-time too. And I'm just swimming. And then my husband wants sex all the time. I don't know how to handle this.

Now, that's a common complaint. How do any of us organize our lives so that they run smoothly for us? How do we do the hard thinking involved?

with reorganizing our goals so that it brings us happiness, it brings us pleasure, and we're not always on a treadmill. With me today is Jean Maroney. She has her master's degree in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University, and she also has her master's degree in electrical engineering from MIT. And then add to that 10 years experience in the engineering field and a graduate training in philosophy from the Ayn Rand Institute.

And so she's taken all of this knowledge and made us a specialty, teaching hard thinking, tackling hard thinking. She gives a course on that. Jean, welcome to the show. Thank you, Ellen. What would you do in this situation if I'm that frazzled parent and I just feel like I'm running in 50 directions and I'm not enjoying my life, I've got to tell you that.

Well, I think this is a classic case where slowing down for a moment is going to make a big difference and speed up how you're going to get through this overall. The thing that I would suggest, whenever you feel overloaded by too much thinking to do and not enough time, is to stop, sit down with a piece of paper, and do what I call thinking on paper.

And all that means is put the pencil to paper and actually write out the thinking as you're doing it. What this will do is it will actually slow you down and make you go through step by step all those things that are running through your head.

Okay, the hardest part for me, and I'll pretend I'm this parent, this hired parent, is that there's so much. I don't have time to sit down and put things on paper. I mean, you don't understand my day. I'm doing laundry. I have to take care of my parents. I have to visit them all the time and make sure they're in good shape. Then I'm off to school. I'm trying to fit school in here. Then I have a part-time job.

And then my husband wants sex at night? Like, you're crazy. I hear you. You don't have time to not think. Wonderful. Wonderful. I mean, what you're talking about is a classic prioritization problem when you have too many things to do and not enough time to do them all. And one of the things that I like to think about

in these kinds of situations. What you need to do is, rather than work harder, you need to prioritize and figure out which are the things that need to get done, which are the most important things, and which are the things that are actually not worth your tremendously precious time.

Okay, so instead of cooking for the PTA, the Parents Teachers Association, instead of doing something for the bake sale, if I have zero time, that may be something that's much lower priority than, say, going to the dentist, taking my kids to the dentist, or studying for an exam the next day. And the fact is, unless you actually stop and think...

You won't be able to put that together because the fact is that you're under so much pressure from so many different directions that you're not in a position to look at the big picture when you're flying from one thing to the next. The only way that you can actually take a look at everything that needs to get done and actually make those decisions of what's most important is by taking a breath, sitting yourself down, and to start, I would say, listing the ten things that have to be done today.

Okay, so delimiting them and then prioritizing them? And then prioritizing them. You know, planning is a thinking skill. And one of the things that you need to do when you've got too many things to do... Hey, I've got to interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it. A very quick ad and then Ellen will be back. Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want.

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Hmm, the selfish path to romance. That is interesting. If you have to look at them, decide which ones really have to get done, for which there's no choice. You also have to try to plan how much time it's going to take. And one of the mottos I have for myself is...

Not wish, plan. Don't wish, plan. You can't just do wishful thinking about how long things are going to take. You have to actually try to be realistic about how long it's going to take, for example, to visit your ailing parents. That could be, you know, there's driving time and visiting time and it's hard to leave and

It's very hard to leave, and sometimes I'm there for two hours, and I don't have that time, but how do you say no? How do you say no? Now, this raises another issue. We started with an effective prioritization problem. When you actually look at the priorities and you see, gee, I can only spend an hour with my parents, and I know that they're going to want to have me stay longer, you have a new kind of problem. You have a particular problem that you need to solve.

And so you change the goal to say, well, how is there a way that I could make sure that I spend only an hour with my parents? What do you think? What would be the kinds of things that you would then think about if you set that as your thinking goal? I might call them up in advance and say, listen, help me out here. I want to come visit. I'm afraid that when I come there I spend too much time because I've got so many other things on the agenda that I end up trying to avoid coming there. If we could delimit it to a half hour and if you could help me out with that, that would be great, Mom.

Yes, so you basically enlist your parents in support of the goal that you want to achieve. Right, I'd let them know right up front in advance so that they don't do any of the game playing, oh, you really have to leave now? Exactly. And I'm not talking about my parents. Right. The point is that the general point here, whether you're overloaded with things to do or you've got a particular thing of how are you going to keep your visit with your parents short,

If you want to try to get control over your life, you need to actually look at what are the problems. It's a funny thing about problem solving. It doesn't happen by itself. You can experience the problems, but unless you step back and stop and identify the problems, you won't actually be able to work out a solution. So there's a huge value in not just leaving it as an experience and, you know, that frenzied experience, but to

put it down on paper to nail what is the precise problem that I'm feeling. And one of the reasons I recommend thinking on paper is that it does make you stop.

Yeah. A lot of times we feel like we're thinking. There are words going through our minds, but they're spinning around back and forth. Well, when you switch to thinking on paper, your thinking starts going in a straight line, and you start actually considering each point as you go through it. It's a very interesting effect, which comes, I think, because thinking on paper is slower than thinking in your mind. You actually...

stop and consider each thought as you go by. Rather than race through it. Rather than race through it. And it's amazing what a little extra consideration on each step does to help you slow down and get some perspective on what is important and what are possible solutions to the real problems that you do face. So thinking on paper is great. Jean, I want to thank you so much for being with us today. Now, you give a course, Tackling Hard Thinking, and I've taken a course with Jean Maroney. She's fabulous.

Can you give us some information on how a business might get in touch with you or an individual might get in touch with you so that they can have the benefit of how to solve their own problems in work or in their own personal life? Thanks, Ellen. I think the easiest way would be through my website, which is www.jeanmoroney.com. That's J-E-A-N-M-O-R-O-N-E-Y dot com.

And the course is Tackling Hard Thinking. That's right. Okay, and it's a lifetime skill. It's one of those skills where you just don't learn it and forget about it. It'll be with you for life. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jean. Thank you for having me. For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to drkenner.com and please listen to this ad. Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Dr. Ellen Kenner. Another virtue that makes you lovable is integrity. Integrity

Thank you.

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