My mind is always in overdrive.  I am constantly thinking.  Thinking of ways to be more efficient, thinking of new business ventures or avenues to look into, thinking of new systems for my current business, and on and on.  My mind doesn’t stop.  I usually always have a pen and paper handy so I can write my ideas down and look into them more later.  Currently I follow 74 rss feeds to keep up with the information I am interested in.  I love to read and I have a bookshelf full of my “next up” books.  My handy iPhone (with the help of iTunes) keeps my iPod full of new podcasts that I want to listen to as I commute to the office or work out not to mention fingertip access to my e-mail and rss reader.  I am constantly checking out what is going on over at Twitter and Facebook because I would hate to miss something.

Dilemma enters here.  With all of these new ideas and things that I am interested in pursuing I severely limit what I can do because of the limited time that we all have to live with.  For me, it has always been paralysis by analysis.  I get bogged down in the details because I am always coming up with new details in the plan and not following through with the things I am interested in doing. I guess you could say it is a problem of focus.  Rather than being a directed beam, I have been diffused into a lot of different areas lately.  While that cheap dollar store flashlight works alright it is no steel-cutting laser.

This year I have set several goals – which is not altogether different from other years except that I am doing some things to hold myself accountable.  One of the things I am doing is going on a media diet.  Diet?  I know some people go on media fasts and head for the mountains where there is no cell phone service and no internet.  With a one year old and a busy life I can’t abandon ship for a few days to just get away.  So what I have tried to do is go on a media diet and drastically limit my media intake.

So what have I been doing.  First, I still do my daily Bible study and reading every morning.  During the times I am driving around in my car I do not plug the iPod or iPhone in or listen to the radio.  I have been trying to meditate and let my mind go a little so I can clear out some of the jumble.  I have also heard of people doing a brain dump and writing on a piece of paper everything that comes to their mind as an exercise to get it out of your head and on paper so you don’t feel like you have to remember everything.  I haven’t tried this yet but I am considering it.  So far this has helped me because it is more time for me to get my thoughts together before I get home and things get put into overdrive as we try to go all out when we have family time at night.

I am trying to limit the rss feeds that I am actually reading to only a specific few and I am spending a lot less time “playing” on the internet.

As with any diet you want to do well, I think having an effective media diet  requires you getting a plan together and sticking with it.  Just think, when you want to diet to lose weight you set some goals and some parameters to be able to keep up with what you are doing.  If you don’t then that extra slice of pizza or one more Mountain Dew doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.

I will keep you updated on some of the things I am doing and results I am getting.  What are you doing to increase focus and cut out some of the clutter in your head?