Mind Mapping: Clear your head, clear your fridge, and prep for a sanity saved week.
It was a hard day when I realized that every week needs mental preparation. Sunday blues don’t always go away on their own. Sometimes they need to be pushed away with two hands.
If you’re like me and have many areas of life to balance and conquer, you likely have numerous thoughts and tasks running through your head, at every given moment. Especially if you’re a mom, there is way more than just your own schedule to be responsible for. A new week can be daunting for sure.
This is where meal prepping, and it’s cousin mind mapping come in.
What is mind mapping? This concept has been around since 1974 and was born as a study mechanism but has since been recognized as a mind organizer. It’s a creative flowchart or web, mapping out all the thoughts and tasks you have swirling around your brain. We’ll get more into how to create one.
The benefits? Organizing your thoughts, putting all your tasks in writing, and seeing the best plan of action. The visual web helps you actually see your plan. Once you have more direction of where you need to be and when, you can deliver optimally.
There are many parallels in meal prepping and “mind prepping”.
The first step in meal prepping is clearing out your fridge and reorganizing. Say goodbye to what you’re not keeping, and replace and add what you are. In order to mind map, you have to clear out your mind. Dump it on a paper, write down what you have for this week, and organize it.
In meal prepping, the Prep and Rally method takes out the thought for you. You have the plan, and the list, and you’re ready to go. When you have your meal prep items done, you can sail through the week and get away with minimal prep later on. Your personal mind mapping can’t be done by anyone other than you, because each life is unique in itself. However once it’s done, it’s time to rally through the week knowing exactly where you are and where you need to be.
To begin your mind map, draw a bubble in the center of a blank paper and write the week’s dates.
Draw a line from that bubble to one side, and write one of your main responsibilities in another bubble. Branch out even more and write each “big” event or task in a bubble off the main one. You can classify them by day of the week or by topic.
Then break it down further by drawing lines out of each of those bubbles and writing thoughts, reminders, tasks, or anything else. Keep going until you feel completely cleared and reorganized.
See an example of a mind map in the photo below, and try it out for yourself! It’s a game changer, really.
Meal prepping and mind mapping each require taking time to clear, prep, and then rally. They are ways to get through the week joyfully (or let’s be honest, unscathed). This is why the Prep and Rally method is such a life saver. It takes the thought out of the week, you have other things to think about.
#mealprep is trending for obvious reasons. It’s sheer convenience. It boosts efficiency and performance. It saves time, money, and sanity.
Plus you’ll feel like an absolute boss.
