like emotional productivity, GTD, organization, emotions, journaling, prioritizing, personal growth, mental health.

It’s a Theory of Mine: Emotional Productivity through GTD Methods

Do you ever feel like your emotions are getting in the way of your productivity and personal growth? If you are constantly distracted or affected by your feelings, then it might be time to apply GTD (Getting Things Done) methods to manage your emotions effectively. Just like how we manage business relationships and prioritize tasks according to their importance, we can also organize our feelings and everything “icky.”

The GTD Workflow involves getting things out of your head and into a tangible system where they are no longer nagging in the back of your mind. This principle applies to emotions as well. First things first, you’ve got to get it out of your head. The emotions that are actionable immediately are essential and require immediate action. For instance, if your feelings are hurt in public and you react to it, it is better to address the situation rather than leaving it to plague you the entire day.

However, it is not always easy to deal with emotions that are not so easily actionable. This is where journaling comes in handy. It’s always good to have a focus and maintain an emotion-specific detail. Writing things down makes the emotion tangible and gives it context. Something that seems important in your head may seem absurd once you have written it down. Journaling doesn’t mean writing in a personal blog, but writing what happened that day or something you would like to work on in the future.

Separating journaling into sections is also a good idea. You could have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sections, making it easy to look back at things that make you happy, and sections that are there just for you to vent. Over time, you will begin to notice patterns and petty grievances that you have outgrown or that have grown worse, so it will be easier to make changes to decrease the negativity in your life.

Organizing your emotions into projects is also crucial. People are continuous projects, so your relationship with your family or friends needs to be worked on continuously. If there are specific emotional goals to achieve within that relationship, then you can make plans to get things working. Your ToDo list for someone could include birthdays, favors, and gifts. If you are always caught up in small problems and cannot get over certain hardships that hold you back, then it is important to form a habit of not falling into those traps again.

Prioritizing your emotions is the key to emotional productivity. When a system is in place, you become used to organizing things into what’s important and of value, and what is not. If you’re organizing your emotions into more definable areas, it becomes even easier to handle and manage them. This will help you not to get caught continuously in unimportant squabbles or regularly be depressed about something you cannot change.

Emotions define our lives and our relationships with others. It is time to make them work in our favor and not against us. With a little organization, we can manage our emotions and become emotionally productive. It may be difficult initially but think about your emotions, write them down, organize them, prioritize them, and let them work for you.