It has dawned on me with increasing ferocity that my mental health is heavily affected by the day-to-day workload of both family life and my job, but most specifically in their requirements on my mental capacity.

We often feel overwhelmed by the barrage of information we need to manage on a daily basis, and much of what our brains are able to cope with is taken over by purely maintaining everything that is coming at us. We end up using our brains merely as a to-do list and file server for crudely subconsciously prioritised information.

It only takes a fraction of a second to find online a million different suggested approaches to handling this overwhelm, be it a productivity method such as Tiago Forte’s ‘second brain’, Ryder Carroll’s ‘Bullet Method’, any number of an ever-increasing, and in itself overwhelming, list of the latest apps that aim to help offload some of that mental workload, or indeed more mindfulness-adjacent approaches that look to create a daily practice to create space in your day to make space in your mind.

Researching all these options adds additional workload, let alone finding the right ‘system’ that works for you, albeit that a successful result will hopefully be an ongoing net-positive from then on. It feels that all of this becomes an attempt to find an even keel through the curse of the Information Age; the negative effects that have replaced scarcity of food, the downsides of literal serfdom, and the threat to livelihood of ages past.

What I’ve found personally is that beyond this finding a workable level to manage the daily requirements of life, there is an increased desire, if not necessity, to reach the level beyond, a level in which my ‘mental legs’ do indeed experience a ‘stretching’. The lazy and absurd metaphor starts to become clearer.

The drain in the mundanity of daily life that expends mental output on chores, appointments, meetings and tasks, only inhibits what is required of our brains, and just as muscles atrophy through lack of work, so do our brains which are inarguably one of our most vital muscles. There is also a selfish aspect that grinds against me that it feels almost all of my thoughts are given over to managing the requirements of others.

For me, the impulse to work at that next level mentally itches at me throughout the day, just as a runner may find they have their day interrupted by the desire to put on their running shoes and get some km under their belts. The reward comes when I’m finally able to dedicate some time to this. Having two young children who both have a habit of disrupting what potential sleep pattern I could build means that much of this happens in the dead hours of the night.

I’ve enjoyed growing my own PKM practice that allows me to capture ideas, concepts and references as I read books or articles, listen to podcasts or watch media – this capturing goes some way to ‘scratch the itch’ – and then the distilling, incorporating and linking of these into my PKM system alongside the inevitable additional thoughts this provides satisfies my needs to further myself in a freer way.

Not only have I acquired additional knowledge, maybe found links between two previously tangentially-related ideas, or simply found something potentially useful that resonated with me, I’ve also taken time to be my own guide through it, allowing my interest take the wheel rather than be a (I hesitate at the word ‘unwilling’) passenger on a train that is careening ahead through life as opportunity and time both fly past the window.