Self Talk has its uses …

A lot of us who do our thinking primarily through self talk or, as we term it in NLP, through Auditory Digital thinking, try to keep track of everything going on in our lives “in our heads”.

And if you have a very busy life and have lots of things to keep track of you’ll know that this is not a very efficient way of keeping track – and that you’ll be quite familiar with the process of constantly ‘going over’ things through self talk:

  • I must remember to do that,
  • When will I have time to fit this in?
  • Emm,  let me think, could I postpone that till tomorrow?
  • Oops, forgot to make that phone call!
  • Now let’s see… where was I…
  • Really sorry! I didn’t hear what you said – my mind must have been elsewhere!
  • Okay, now how can I possibly fit this in…?
  • Did I send that email earlier?

Thinking through self talk has its uses as, for example, in making decisions or weighing up pros and cons. But if your life requires you to multitask or you’d like to have less mental chatter it might be a good idea to start The Daily Plan habit.

It’s ‘just’ a to-do list

The Daily Plan is essentially a Pegasus NLP-refined version of the traditional ‘to do’ list which you can use to better manage your time – and better manage your thinking – by enabling you to prioritise your activities as well as think more clearly and efficiently.

With it you invest 5-10 minutes each evening in making a list of everything that needs your attention the following day.

The pay off

When you have your day planned on paper

  1. You don’t have to keep your mind `on the go’ all day long – continuously going over things in your mind, reminding yourself about things, or worrying whether you can fit everything in
  2. You avoid creating or adding to a sense of on-going urgency
  3. You will find it easier to mentally relax, switch off, and enjoy recreation time during the day and, especially, in the evening so you can recharge your batteries..
  4. You make it less likely that, at night, you will spend time lying awake trying to decide what and when and how to do things the following day
  5. Your day is more ordered – and you go through your tasks more easily and systematically.

Mental Rehearsal

There is an additional and quite important benefit to ussing The Daily Plan. When you use it to do your planning in the evening and then put work-related issues aside your inner mind goes through a process of background mental rehearsal and prepares you for what is on your plan – without having to actively think about it!

(Incidentally if you do a lot of your thinking through imagery, rather than self talk, you may find it more effective to do a Mind Map rather than make a traditional list. )

There’s an article on precisely how to go about using Daily Plan on our Mind-Body Health website

2 thoughts on “Replace (some) mental chatter with The Daily Plan”

  1. GrahamJ

    The old to-do list; so simple yet so effective, and in my experience the mental rehearsal that results does actually happen. Also, when you begin the new day, you can hit the ground running rather than pondering upon what you need to do.
    In spite of all of the benefits, I find a good number of people, from personal friends to high-profile celebrities, who think that to-do lists are very uncool, a sign of being a control freak and only for people who lack spontaneity. That such people live chaotic lives and complain that they are ‘so stressed’ is no surprise.
    If anyone out there should be influenced by the anti to-do list people, I would suggest that the arguments being used reflect, amongst other things, a binary mind. In other words, it is a child-like, simplistic way of thinking.

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