How to cultivate clarity in your life

Are you feeling regularly overwhelmed? Do you wish to be more productive?

You feel trapped in a loop where you don’t have control over your life. You are wasting time and energy, but don’t achieve so much.

What you probably need is to cultivate clarity in your life.

Let’s see in this article how to help you with that.

Why do you need to cultivate clarity?

You may experience at work that you are not as productive as you wish. You often get confused and a bit lost.

Or in your private life, you get confused about how to manage your finances or take care of your health.

Or even in your relationships.

Gaining clarity can help you with all aspects of your life and start to achieve more. Be more productive.

It helps you know what to do, how to do it, and most importantly, why you do it!

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Why do you lack clarity?

The first problem you probably experience is confusion.

You know these thousands of thoughts you have every day. If you let your mind follow these thoughts, you won’t be able to get many things done.

You also face a lot of distractions during your day. From your environment, from people surrounding you. And let’s be honest, you get distracted by your social media accounts and emails.

If you are disorganized, you will more likely to lack clarity. If you are surrounded by chaos or lack of time management, you will lose focus and be distracted more easily.

How to cultivate clarity in your life?

Let’s see now what to do to gain clarity in your life.

Find your vision

I wrote an article here to help you find your vision.

But shortly, if you have a purpose, you will gain clarity. You will know why you do what you do. Which in turn helps you keep focus.

Set goals and write them down

You need to have specific goals and to write them down on paper.

I use myself a small notebook, a simple kind of bullet journal. Inside I write down my weekly goals and my daily goals.

Thus, each week, each day, I already decided what I want to work on. It is clear and I just have to get it done.

Set priorities

In addition to setting goals, you should choose your priorities of the day. At least one and no more than three.

Just by taking the time to choose your priorities, you will gain a lot of clarity.

Get a third party opinion

If you lack clarity on a particular problem, ask questions, discuss it.

You have probably already experienced this situation where you find the solution while you ask the question.

It happens to me from time to time. The fact of formalizing your thought and speaking helps you gain clarity.

Of course, listening to the feedback of others can be valuable to clarify the situation.

Take action

When you face a situation with several options or choices, you might end up confused and stuck.

It happens to me regularly.

How to deal with this? Take action. Start working on any of these options and you will gain clarity and focus.

For example, I had several ideas to write about before I wrote this article, and I was a bit confused. I started to write about one of these topics (the one you are reading about) and all the confusion disappeared.

Clear your environment

If your environment is cluttered, full of distracting objects, your brain will pick them up and increase the odds of getting you lost.

Keep it clear of anything unnecessary or distracting.

It applies to your desk, but also to your computer.

Only keep the documents and windows you need for the current task.

I used to have tens of tabs opened on my web browser and It just led me to lots of distraction.

Now I close everything when I am done with something before I start with the next task.

What to do when you lose clarity

I want know to share with you tips to help you in practice during your day.

You have set your goals and your priorities. Everything is clear and fine. The day goes on and you start to be distracted and confused by your thoughts or colleagues. You finally lose focus and see your productivity fall down.

What can you do practically to deal with this.

Remind yourself your why, your vision

Reminding yourself of your purpose will help you re-focus and see clearly what you have to do.

Check your goals and priorities

Since you have them written down on paper, you can read them. You will be able to refocus very quickly on what you decided to work on today.

Have a break

When you feel too confused, you can also stop everything and take a break. It can be short. A few minutes can be enough.

You may close your eyes and breathe deeply to calm your thoughts. Or do a short meditation, very efficient to quiet your mind.

You can also look far away and empty your mind. Take a short walk or go for a tea or a coffee.

An effective technique, especially if you are at home, is to clean or tidy up something.

The fact to engage in physical activity helps to calm down your mind. And cleaning tends to “clean” your mind as well.

Write down what you are doing

The last tip I want to share with you here is something I experienced by myself.

When I feel confused while working on something, I write done on a piece of paper what I am actually doing.

It may sound stupid, but it works. At least for me.

The idea is that writing is slow compared to thinking. Thus, it slows down your mind. And since you write about your current task, your mind refocuses on what you have to do.

Simple and efficient.

Try it and let me know in the comment how it works for you!

Conclusion

You have now a few tips to help you to cultivate clarity in your life, in any aspect you need it.

I took mainly examples from work, but you can use them broadly.

I have a question for you: do you feel often confused about what to do or how to do it? How do you deal with these situations?