Skip to main content

Organising My Mental Priorities

We’ve been in our house for just over two years now. Our street is a part of a brand new suburb, and a vast majority of our neighbours are in the same demographic as us who are building their first home.

But I noticed that many of my neighbours park their cars along the sidewalk or in the driveway. Many of them don’t use their garage to park their cars.

When I’ve gone out for walks and taken a sneakly peak into their garage, I’ve observed that their garages are full of stuff taking up the space where their car should be parked.

I’ve been adamant that I wanted to use my garage to park my car, and not primarily for storage. To accomplish this, I’ve done a few things.

Firstly I got rid of junk and stuff I didn’t need.

Secondly, I organised what was left over into shelves and hooks on the walls to ensure there was enough room to park my car.

And thankfully I’ve been about to manage this!

I’ve noticed parallels in my own mindset towards making space and time for studying the Bible. Very often I feel like I don’t have the capacity or time to do any sort of personal studies. Yet the garage of my mind is filled with all kinds of junk and very disorganised.

So my priorities are just sitting outside of the mind instead.

Here are some things I’ve tried to help organise my priorities and create space for studying the Bible.

Reduce Inputs

Just like all the junk that my neighbours have in their garage, I also have a lot of unneccesary inputs going into my brain. I get all sorts of information from the following sources

  • Instagram

  • Youtube

  • Podcasts

  • Audiobooks

  • eBooks

Some of these are intentionally providing me with information (content from podcasts and books), and some of them are passively flooding me with information (eg, Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts). Although not all the inputs are bad, its the overall volume that is clogging up my brian and mental capacity.

I’ve tried to change this by significantly reducing the amount of social media I consume, and reduce the amount of podcasts I listen to. By bringing down the levels of pure content I’m receiving, I’ve started to reduce the mental junk that fills my mind.

Organise Thoughts

Even after reducing the total number of inputs, I’ve tried to capture and organise what it is that I am learning from them. I do this by using the note taking app Notion, and using a little notebook to write down things as I go along.

Whats great about this is it organises all of the inputs a lot more, and also helps motivate me to keep the volume of information down if I now have to process and write down what it is that I’m learning.

And as I’m taking notes into some sort of organised structure, I’m much more intentional about what I’m writing down and where that fits.

Now that my mental inputs have been cleared out and I’m organising whats left, I can start to use my brain for some useful things.

By attempting this I’ve found it a bit easier to be aware of the distractions that pull me away from my goals. And having systems and structure in place with taking notes of what I’m learning is helping a lot.

But I’ve noticed bad habits have started to creep back in. So this is definitely something I’ll have to refine further and work on!

Have a try for yourself! Check out this blog post for some ideas on how to find out where some of your distractions may be coming from - https://www.bibleroadmaps.com/blog/the-ultimate-selfie-filter

Popular posts from this blog

Writing for Lent 2025 - The Book of Matthew

I recently stumbled across a fascinating Youtube channel called IMBeggar . From their website: “IMbeggar is about finding new, different, creative, positive, entertaining, hard-hitting, and most importantly, accessible ways to talk about God” What draw my attention to this channel was a video about Lent. Here is a link to it: Lent is a 40 day fast leading up to Easter weekend traditionally practiced by the Catholic and Orthodox church. Starting 46 days before Easter (the fast often excludes Sunday’s), and is intended as a time of preparation and focus before celebrating the Passion week of Jesus. Something that I’ve been doing each year during Lent is writing out one of the Gospel narratives by hand. I call this “Writing for Lent”. This is an interesting exercise as I am forced to slow down and take in every word from the Scriptures. If the 30 Day Bible Shred is a sprint, Writing for Lent is a slow stroll through the park. I can take in every little details and peice of literat...
Read more

Bible Shred 2025 Key Takeaways

I think this was my 11th year doing the 30-day Bible Shred. I decided to go for a bit of a challenge and read from a paper Bible rather than a digital or audio Bible. I haven’t don’t that for many years as its takes quite a bit more allocation time and attention. To make things more interesting I used a KJV pocket sized Bible that I found at a second hand book store. I wasn’t able to read through every allocated day. There were 7 days that I struggled to catch up, so I listened via audio Bible, and have since re-read those missed sections. This year’s reading felt different, and I can’t quite articulate why. But one theme that really stood out to me was something that I can only describe as the DIVINE INCONSISTENCY OF GOD. Let me explain. Although God describes Himself as the one who outworks judgement of His people, He very easily averts His judgement if there are those who intercept and and repent. I’ve heard those who object to the claimed good natu...
Read more

30 Day Bible Shred 2025

The Bible Shred 2025 is coming up! Each year this is a personal challenge that many understake to read through the whole Bible (yes, the entire Bible) in 30 days. The goal is to: To overview the whole Bible. Try and get as much of the Scripture into your brain at the start of the year. But the Bible is a very big body of text, and 30 days is not a lot of time. Here are some of my favourite tips and suggestions that I’ve found have really helped me over the years that I’ve been doing this. 1) Find a format that is appropriate for your season of life The three primary formats for the Bible is a physical paper Bible, a digital Bible read through apps or ereaders, or audio Bibles. They all have their benefits and limitations, so its best to find an option that works for you that will help you accomplish your goal. Physical bibles often let you notice a lot more, but take dedicated time and space to read. If you have young kids or travel frequently, then this may not be the ...
Read more