Some thoughts sit still long enough to deal with. Others flit in and flit out, like fireflies. A call you need to return, a worry about someone on your team, the thing you said you’d sort by Friday. None of them stays long, but together they can crunch your brain to sawdust.
Catching fireflies is the exercise we use for this. We use it with the executives we work with, and we use it with each other at home, usually when one of us is the one who’s overwhelmed.
Why it helps
When everything lives in your head, it all feels equally urgent. Once it’s caught and sorted on paper, you can see how big each thing really is, and which part of your life it belongs to. That alone takes a lot of the pressure off.
There’s some early research behind writing things down. In a 2018 sleep lab study, young adults who spent five minutes writing a specific to-do list before bed fell asleep faster than those who wrote about tasks they’d already finished (Scullin et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General). It was a small study, so we hold it lightly.
How to do it
Before you start, take a few slow breaths with the exhale longer than the inhale. It’s easier to see clearly from a calmer body.
- Draw your jars. One jar for each hat you wear. Leader, parent, partner, friend, the board seat, the coach on Saturdays. Write the name of the hat on each jar.
- Catch every firefly. Every thought that’s taking up headspace goes into a jar. Open loops, tasks, worries, projects, the small stuff too. Don’t judge or sort them yet, just catch them.
- Look at your jars. Which ones are overflowing? Which hat is asking the most of you right now? Often the picture is different from the one in your head.
- Do, defer or delegate. Go through each jar. What will you do, what can wait for a set time, and what can someone else carry?
- Share the load if you can. If there’s someone in your corner, go through the jars together. Some of it may not be yours to carry alone.
This is one of Rachel’s own. Messy is fine. The point is to get it out of your head.
Some people catch their fireflies in the middle of the overwhelm. Others make it a weekly habit, so the jars never get too full.
Where to next
If your jars keep filling up faster than you can empty them, that’s worth a proper look. A Health Strategy Session is where we start. And if your fireflies come out mostly at night, read our 3-2-1 Sleep Principle.