The mind does not like unfinished tasks. It keeps nagging at you as you, compelling you to run it in your mind over and over again. The only ways to free yourself from this are to
a) Finish the task already
b) Decide to abort the task
c) Delegate the task
d) Decide what you will do with it and when
One of these four frees your mind from the unfinished tasks. The mind also treats goals and problems as unfinished tasks. .The more goals and problems as well as unfinished tasks you carry around with you, the more your energy and willpower are scattered instead of focused, depleted instead of stored. You will experience a marked increase in well-being and power by writing down all unfinished things, tasks, errands, emails, phone-calls, projects, problems, goals, desires, hopes, fears and then applying one of the 4 abovementioned decisions to them.
If you finish everything on your list you reach a place I call "free attention" or "zero point" or "freedom of mind". It is recommended that you stay close to zero for the rest of your life. But first you have to get to zero. Because once you have gotten to zero physically, you can get to zero mentally, thus having a completely clear mind. For instance if you have a a tray at your desk where you put all unfinished stuff and letters and you completely take care of everything that is in there, you will have reached a physical zero point in that regard. From there it will be easier to do an inner inventory of inner unfinished stuff and reach a zero point there too.
So am I saying that the "peace of mind" state so many Meditation-Practitioners try to achieve can be facilitated by cleaning up the stuff on your desk? Yes, that's what I'm saying! The unfinished saps attention (energy) from your overall state. It's very subtle and not much energy that is sapped, but in accumulation it makes a difference.
Have you ever had a piece of music you just can't get out of your mind? You have such earworms usually, because the song was turned off before it was finished. This may sound strange, but test it out for yourself. Unfinished songs are repeated in the mind again and again, whereas songs that have reached completion, are forgotten. That's why many of the earworms are often of songs you don't really like. You turned them off.
The cause of too much thinking-ness is the lifetime accumulation of unfinished tasks. Incomplete relationships that were aborted. Incomplete jobs. Incomplete plans. Incomplete goals. It is they that torture you, it is they that make you tense. That's why it is good to leave people in a state of peace. If you break your relationship to your parents or boy/girlfriend, do so in peace. If you do so in a negative atmosphere, you will be thinking about them for years to come.. And then when you get tired of thinking of them, you suppress them into the subconscious. But they don't leave, they are just suppressed, depleting your energy even more.
In some rare cases you won't be able or willing to finish the task yourself at this time. In this case you can still finish it "for your mind" by applying one of the other three decisions: Abort, Delegate or Decide/Write down how you will handle it. You abort a task when you realize its not for you, its not good for you or it does not interest you. You then simply decide no longer to invest time, energy, attention in that direction. This is easier when you list all unfinished tasks and prioritize them by numbers and then realize which ones are not really important. Then, there is always the option to delegate. Overwhelm saps willpower, priorization and delegation stores willpower. So if cleaning the apartment starts getting really tedious and you do not use cleanliness as a meditation-exercise or while listening to your favorite programs, then delegate it to a cleaning-person who is happy to do the job for money. Or if there is some disturbance in your life that you seem not to be able to get rid of, then delegate it to God or the Universe. Say: "Please take care of this for me. I delegate this thing to you". The third option is to simply write down what you will do about the thing and by when you will do it. Some tasks cannot be taken care of today, the await you at a later date. If you can put them on some schedule or calendar, your mind will not have to preoccupy itself with them until that date. More energy is saved.
What to do with all this energy saved by coming to zero-point? Well, those ideas will come to you much more easily when your mind is clear. Free your mind.
Related: The Reality Creation Course
