Put It In The Bucket

Ever sit down to try to focus on a task, only to be distracted by scads of mental clutter such as whether or not you paid that bill, or what the test results will be when you get them?

Above: The Man

Hey, The Man gets us down in so many ways, it’s not even funny.

Everywhere you look, The Man is tryin’ to keep you down.

Any time you think, The Man is there, clouding your mental processes with useless, insignificant shit.

Well, put it in the bucket.

The Bucket is a little mental trick I learned from reading 43 Folders, which is both a blog and a book about ‘life hacks’ or personal productivity enhancements. Because Lord knows, I ain’t the most productive cat in the herd, and I need all the help I can get. My life’s a freakin’ Commodore 64 tryin’ to run Red Hat Linux here.

The concept behind 43 Folders is this: when you have something cross your mind, write it down and put it into a physical bucket for later review.

Let’s say you gotta iron a shirt for an upcoming job interview, but right now, you’re shearing sheep.

When’s the next time you’re gonna remember to iron that damn shirt?

Right. It’ll be 5 minutes before your job interview or something.

So just write it down, and put it in the bucket.

What you end up doing is processing that information in your head for later review. By writing it down, you release it from your mental clutter. When it pops back into your head, you just say “I put that f*cker in the bucket, so no need to worry”.

I’ve gotten my buddy somewhat started on using an even more stripped down version of this as a part of his stress management. It doesn’t even use physical index cards - you just imagine a bucket in which you can place mental clutter. For example, on Sunday, he had to deal with an jerkwad of a client the next day and was really worried. It was eating him up inside. And he was trying to do dishes, which is a mentally demanding task. (Believe me - it is).

He was worried about everything save for the price of gorilla crap in Africa.

Then, out of the blue, he said: “Put it in the bucket”.

Later on in the convo, the bane of his worries came up again, and so I just said “Put it in the bucket, man”.

I can’t speak for him, but puttin’ stuff in the proverbial mental bucket sure helps, and you should give ‘er a try.

In a way, blogging is a lot like putting something in a bucket. For example, I’ve been thinking about this all week. The cathartic process of releasing it into the blogosphere combined with the knowledge that I can revisit this for later review, means I can finally let this go and start thinking about other things.

Don’t let The Man get ya down - put it in the bucket!