I Was Wrong — Here Is Why You Do NOT Want To Capture Thoughts Non-Stop (Barbell #9)

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I mentioned here that you should capture every recurring thought, idea, and negative feeling as soon as they happen.

However, I have radically changed my mind since then. After a thorough examination of myself, I discovered the following side-effects of capturing your thoughts all the time:

• Capturing has a cost. The more often you do it, the more you realize that the benefits are diminishing.
• Rumination about doing it right. When you are doing your normal activities and receive a stream of thoughts, you have to decide whether to stop or forget it, which causes unnecessary stress.
• You become too jittery, fidget too much, and cannot truly relax (certainly the case for me).

In addition, you become fragile. For a long time, I believed that you could only reach the present state by removing all recurring thoughts. However, by trying to remove them, I actually created more recurring thoughts sounding like this: “Am I in the present state now? Why not? What is bothering me?”

As you can see, believing in the present state as an absence of thoughts is truly fragile and a futile battle. Instead, you should let go and accept that they are coming. Then you can quickly turn your attention into outward presence without needing to use your hands. Thoughts are completely gone once acknowledged (which was a hard pill to swallow for me after 2.5 years of non-stop capturing).

Too much noise

In every field of life, there exists a signal-to-noise ratio. How much of the information is useful vs just random fluctuations.

In the masterpiece Antifragile, Taleb writes:

“Assume further that for what you are observing, at the yearly frequency the ratio of signal to noise is about one to one (say half noise, half signal) — it means that about half of changes are real improvements or degradations, the other half comes from randomness. This ratio is what you get from yearly observations. But if you look at the very same data on a daily basis, the composition would change to 95% noise, 5% signal. And if you observe data on an hourly basis, as people immersed in the news and markets price variations do, the split becomes 99.5% noise to .5% signal. That is two hundred times more noise than signal — which is why anyone who listens to news (except when very, very significant events take place) is one step below sucker.“

In other words, the more you indulge in data, the more noise you get.

The same goes for capturing your thoughts. If you are too adamant about reflecting on a digital note, most of what is coming out are unimportant. You can pretty much forget it without any harm.

The only thing you truly want to capture is the signal (i e mismatched commitments and stunning insights). Fortunately, they will always stick around much longer. This means that you can afford to wait until you are in a position to brain dump.

The question remains, how often should you write down your thoughts?

It depends on the situation

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all formula. Fortunately, you will feel when you need to capture or not after a while. Your body will behave somewhat automatically if something you truly must not forget.

However, if you are new to writing down your thoughts, I recommend you schedule in your calendar 2–5 occasions every day for brain dumping for one week. Follow the instructions here to write down whatever you think during that session and then do the actions prescribed.

Once you have completed the week, you do not need to allocate extra time. You have now tasted how it feels to be free from your thoughts. You can now rely on your immediate judgment when you feel you should write it down or just let go.

Nevertheless, it takes time and practice to truly get the intuitive sense. In the meantime, you can follow the following heuristics:

• Whenever you cannot let go of a thought for at least 2 minutes, write it down or adjust your task manager and calendar right then.
• If you are doing planned work and get stuck, write down every thought you have until you can effortlessly continue. This is the recipe for achieving the flow state which I have written more about here.
• Whenever you receive a commitment or opportunity at your plate, capture it right then.
• If you are stressed and in a negative thought spiral, take some minutes to write down your automatic thoughts (more on it here) to relieve the situation. Do it if you are very consumed in frustration, worry, panic or hopelessness.
• Do NOT capture when driving, sports, interactive physical activities and lying in bed. Unless a thought has a grip on you for more than 10 minutes, you should let it go.

Otherwise, be comfortable with letting thoughts pass, and you can effortlessly enter the present state without any action on your part.

If you like this article series, you will enjoy the full e-book (a full expansion on how to use the Barbell System in your daily life). Click here to learn more.