The Thinking Book: How to Fix Mental Fog Forever

0:00 So, you've got your to-do app perfectly organized, your calendar colorcoded, and a productivity system that should be working. You're doing everything the productivity gurus tell you to do. You're checking all the right boxes, following all the best practices, but your brain still feels like a browser with 37 tabs open. Why do you still feel so mentally cluttered? I totally get that feeling. You're technically doing productivity right, but there's still this constant mental background noise. Important thoughts get lost. decisions feel overwhelming and you're constantly second-guessing yourself even with all the correct tools. Here's what I realized. You're not missing another app or a better system. You're missing a thinking book. A place to actually work through the mental clutter that your productivity tools can't touch. In this

0:46 video, I'm going to show you what a thinking book is, why your brain needs one, and how to get started. Let's talk about what a thinking book is. A thinking book is essentially a notebook that helps you find mental clarity. I have two examples. One that I just started and this is actually one from like precoid or maybe 2021ish. Yeah, definitely pre uh before I started this YouTube channel. So, we really have the full spectrum here. And don't worry, I have a vast variety of other thinking books just on off camera. So, this video is going to contain a lot of examples. But, let's just focus on that feeling of having a cluttered mind, right? We're all very familiar with it. It's when you're dwelling on past problems, uneasy about things you have to do, and overthinking about the future without

1:32 ever like coming to any conclusions or actually solving any problems. I think of it like that feeling when you're trying to think about like your weekend plans, but you also need to respond to that text from your mom and like, "Oh, didn't you need to also research that thing for school and where are you on your creative projects?" And you can't stop thinking about that movie you saw and you don't know how to feel about the political things going on in the world. everything is just very stressful and your brain starts snowballing and that is the kind of mental clutter that we despise on this channel. We hate it. There's this thing called cognitive load theory. It basically describes how our working memory gets overloaded, which basically happens when we're trying to hold too many thoughts at once, as I just demonstrated. And when our mind gets overloaded, our ability to process new information essentially crashes us out and then we can't do anything. So if

2:17 you've ever had that spiral, that snowball of thoughts and then you've just like laid on your couch and doom scrolled, you are experiencing the negative side of cognitive load theory. So mental clarity by contrast is about getting a clean workspace in your brain. So it's about being able to think about one thing at a time without competing thoughts hijacking your attention like every 30 seconds. Now you might be thinking at this point in the video, Rachel, this sounds like journaling. That kind of journaling where you're getting your thoughts out longhand. But there is a key difference between what I'm talking about between a thinking book and a journal. A thinking book is going to be a book like a paper book that is outcome oriented, not reflectionoriented. So let me show you what I mean. This is my journal. It is my real actual journal. I do journal in it every single day. It is a very private document, so I'm not going to

3:04 show you too much, but I will show you one page in particular. This sort of gives you an example of what a journal is. I was documenting a flight that I had. So, I was flying from Denver to Burbank um from a trip that I was on and I actually had gone all the way to Boston and so I was documenting how I felt about Boston. I put in a little momento from the hotel I stayed at. I wrote down what I got from Mike's Pastry. Shout out Mike's Pastry in Boston. Best canoli ever. Uh and then also I kept the like string that they give you your canoli in. So, this is definitely a book in which I'm just like documenting how I'm feeling, documenting my day, my journal entries. They're all about like keeping memories, right? I'm literally keeping like physical momentos

3:50 in here, and I'm processing emotions, reflecting on my day, exploring how I feel about something. So, the writing itself is the destination in a journal. But a thinking book, by contrast, is about solving problems and making decisions. So the writing is just the vehicle in a thinking book to get to a clear answer or an action plan. And you'll notice both of these are in the exact same notebook. This is a Moleskine A5 size or the large size notebook. So yeah, a thinking book isn't anything special. It can literally be the same item you use your for your journal. But the difference is a journal is about reflection. A thinking book is about action. What makes a thinking book different from other systems besides journaling is that it's actually meant to be temporary. So, your thinking book isn't the final destination for your

4:36 thoughts. It's just the thinking process made visible. This is an example from a thinking book that I have had in the past where I'm just thinking through some YouTube video ideas and I'm dumping them out and I'm crossing them off and I'm adding little arrows. I'm making notes that like this should actually be for planner season. this should be for them. But actually, this is not the destination for any of these thoughts. This is just me using the piece of paper to work through the problem and reach a conclusion and then I move the final insights that I've gathered here to their permanent home. So, it's like a workshop where you build something versus the gallery where you display the finished piece. And in this case, the YouTube ideas gallery where I'm

5:22 displaying the finished piece is actually a note um on my computer through Apple notes that I share with my producer. So these pieces, these like concise video ideas need to be in that system to be displayed there so that we can use them there. But they are built often here in the thinking book where I can really use the the the tool that is handwriting to get out all my thoughts. So, inevitably, some of these things that you think through will go into a space, like a journal. Some of them will go into your notes app. Some of them will go into a commonplace notebook, a product outline, a recipe booklet, an email. But a thinking book is just the tool that you use to get your thoughts from clutter jumble mess in your brain into their final form so that you can actually use them when you're done.

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7:41 you set everything up perfectly. Thanks again to Akaflow for sponsoring today's video. Now, let's get back to those thinking techniques that'll help you work through mental clutter on paper. Let's talk about some core thinking techniques now. So, I have three core thinking techniques for you. The first one is going to be for mind mapping complex problems. Okay, so this is perfect when you're dealing with something that has multiple moving parts or when you can't figure out why a situation feels so complicated. The first example I'm going to show you is really freaking embarrassing. Okay, so ignore this. That's private. This is also not really relevant at all. We're going to focus on this part of the page. Okay, so I was very sick one day back in the day in like March and uh but but I had a huge presentation at work and I have a really hard time I don't know if

8:28 any other millennials feel this vibe, but I had a I have a really hard time not going to work when I'm sick. It's a habit I'm trying to break. Um, but for whatever reason, I'm just, you know, an overachiever like that. Uh, but I like couldn't handle it on this day. I was literally so sick. I think I tested later and I had I actually had CO. So, what ended up happening was I needed to mind map it out cuz these thoughts were just rolling over in my head. I was like, I'm going to disappoint my team. I'm going to disappoint everybody. I'm going to be a failure. Like the dean of I work at a university. The dean was supposed to be at this presentation. I was like, I'm going to disappoint her and then I'm going to get fired. Like my mind was just going crazy. So I mind mapped out the options. So I knew step one was call HR and talk about the CO policies and then decide what I was going to do. So I then I wrote out

9:14 options. I mind mapped out options. Go in a full day but quarantine except for the presentation. And at that point, you know, I'm presenting. I'm on stage. I'm actually quite far away from everybody else. Uh I could go in just for the presentation and just deliver the presentation like obviously with a mask on. And then I could not go in. And my options for not going in were then making a recording so that that recording could be presented at the presentation instead of me up there presenting. I could just send my recording and know that the information got conveyed. And I know this seems silly. You're like obviously you shouldn't go in if you had co Rachel. But this was where my mind was at authentically. My mind was so stressed out about not being able to deliver on this presentation that I was really

10:00 considering stupid stuff like going in when I had co it was insane. So actually handwriting it out really helped me be like oh actually an option is to just not go in. And then from there I got to thinking about oh I I can make a recording instead or I can write down every word of my presentation for my presentation partner or for my boss or whoever is going to be delivering the presentation instead of me. So once I figured that out, then I had options and I was able to ma map my way to options to figure out what I actually should do. And this is the key with mind mapping. It's to not judge or edit as you go. Just get whatever out of your head needs to be out of your head onto paper and then you look for the patterns. You look for the solutions. You look for the

10:48 answers to your problem. And for me, I literally had to walk through every option, even the really stupid ones. and dangerous ones in order to get to the one that I actually should do, which is to not go in and to make a recording. And then that's that's how it went. Technique number two, um, discrete issue processing for mental clarity is what I'm is what I'm calling this tip. Really, it is long is it is about when longhand writing can be used in a thinking notebook. Remember, a thinking book is to help you think through the problems that you're facing. is to help you think through the things you need to think about so that they have a solution. So longhand writing does have its place in a thinking notebook. But in a journal, it's going to be much longer. It could be pages and pages. And it's really just about documentation and reflection. For the

11:35 long-hand writing that you're doing in your thinking book, what you actually want the goal to be here is about focusing down into something that's really itching your mind and getting just that discreet small issue out on the paper. So, just like with the mind mapping example, this was a discrete and small problem, specific, unique. So, when we approach our thinking book with the intent to journal or get something out longhand, we want to make sure we're still approaching it with that discrete issue that needs resolving. In this example, I was watching a ton of content. Not this page, just ignore this page. It's about this page. Um I was experiencing or I was watching a lot of content about um the content ecosystem which is an ecosystem I am a part of.

12:21 Obviously I'm a content creator. Um and also I studied it I studied it a lot for my educ in my education and I also work in content creation for my day job. So I I create a ton of content and I was watching a lot of content about content and about the role the content ecosystem plays in our economy and is it ethical? Is it not ethical? What are the behaviors that are ethical? What makes it ethical? What makes it not ethical? All these kinds of like conundrums. And I just this was all swirling around in my head. It was I was spiraling. I definitely needed somewhere to work out what I really thought or felt about this and what my perspective as a content creator was. So, I journaled about it and I knew this would not take very long and I knew it was a problem I was

13:07 feeling, a discrete problem I was feeling in my brain. So, a thinking notebook was definitely the place for it as opposed to a journal. It definitely could be done in a journal, but since it was a discrete problem that would inform how I would act in the future, I wanted it to be in a thinking book. Um, and I journaled on it. And as I always say, when it's in your head, it feels like it's swarming around there and it's like a horde of bees chasing you around your own mind. But when you get it out on paper, you realize that the thought process is really just this big. Your thought that was chasing you around your mind is actually really small. And now after journaling through it, I feel so much more clear. The swarm of bees is out of my head. And when I look at it on paper, I can see that the uncertainty that was overwhelming me so much is is like literally only like five inches

13:53 long, right? It's like so small. And also now I know myself a lot better. Ultimately, this journaling didn't really come to any behavior change. But this type of journaling can then lead to behavior change or it might lead to an outcome that you want to implement in your workflow. It might lead to a change in philosophy, something like that. that then you can take this rough draft of your thought and put it into its final form wherever it belongs in your systems or in your life philosophy or or wherever. Okay, technique number three that I want to talk about is drawing and doodling for creative breakthroughs. Okay, this one might seem weird, but there's actually a lot of research that shows that doodling while thinking can help with problem solving. So, I don't see why drawing can't be a form of problem solving in and of itself. Um, for one,

14:39 the physical act of drawing keeps part of your brain occupied so that you can actually think more clearly. Like it's sort of like watching a YouTube video in the background while you clean. But also, there's some problems that just writing cannot solve. You like literally need to draw it out. And so, I have a couple of examples for this one cuz I actually think it's really multifaceted. This particular example is an example of a map that I needed to draw out for a fanfiction I was writing. And actually an earlier version of the map I drew here. And then you can see that I was not satisfied with this and I just needed a larger more detailed colorful map that I drew here. So you can see I'm trying to work through like okay um my characters in this piece of fiction are actually going on a journey sort of

15:27 traveling around the underworld and I need to know where they are so that I can describe their surroundings successfully. And so I was doing all this thinking being like, okay, if the cottage is here, then the lake has to be here, the castle has to be here. But actually, what if the lake is way down here and the cottage is up here and then the castle's right above the cottage? Like you can see this is like rough draft, more finished draft. And then these locations then all get ported into my uh writing document, which is Scriber that I use to write. So, I'm working through problems with color and with shapes in a way that really suits my brain. Another example of this is I was trying to

16:13 figure out how to plan my living room and I drew out a map of my living room, which is like it's a like open concept. There's like a breakfast nook over here, kitchen over here, and then living room right here. And I just wanted to redesign it. And so I was like picturing furniture in places, but this would not be possible to imagine if I was just longhand writing and then I'm going to put the TV against the back wall, right? I wouldn't be able to visually picture it. So drawing really helps for those problems where a visual aid is necessary. Right? Both of these are spatial problems that I'm trying to solve. One for fiction, one for my actual real life. Um, so drawing can really really help for that. But also the last piece I want to share on drawing is that drawing can also help

17:01 just capture the sense of something or someone. So this is a drawing I did of a little character. Um I wish I even remembered her name right now. Apparently I didn't write it anywhere. I think it was like Bianca or something. Um but I was using this notebook to um this is from like 2021 I think. And this was my thinking notebook from 2021. And in this particular page, I was using it to play Monster of the Week, which is a tabletop roleplay game. It's really, really fun. And I play was playing with my friends. And I had created this character that I knew a little bit about. I had written she's a woman. She has a trustworthy face. She wears casual clothing. So that's some of the things that I was thinking about. And then in

17:46 uh Monster of the Week, there's a few details that your character has. Like they have stat points in charm. cool, sharp, tough, and weird. And so I knew I wanted her to be tough, so she's a plus one in tough. I knew I wanted her to be really charming, so she's really charming and really friendly and very cool as well. And so I was thinking about this person, this woman who seemed really trustworthy, was very charming, was pretty tough, but was overall very casual, whose name was like Bianca or something. And I was feeling as we were playing the game, I was like, I just need to see what she looks like so that I can know how she would behave. How does her body move? What does her face look like? What is she wearing? And the only way I could figure that out was by drawing her. So, I drew her. And I do this a ton. My old thinking books are

18:33 filled with like tons of weird little people. Okay, apparently not in this thinking book, but my thinking books are traditionally filled with like weird little people that I draw um just so that I can get a sense of a character or a sense of a person or um otherwise feel like I understand what's going on um with this particular person. So, that's another example of how drawing can be used to like capture an emotion or a sense or a feeling. I often also draw just like smiley faces or frowny faces when something makes me happy or sad. And these are micro examples of emotions that painting or drawing can contain. So when you're drawing, you're actually expressing something and you are working through a problem even if it doesn't feel as like familiar to you as like

19:18 longhand journaling or mind mapping or something else. But when you think on paper, you don't just have to think with words. You can also think spatially and artistically, which makes a thinking book all the more powerful. Okay, let's talk about how to set a thinking book up, right? So, a thinking book can be anything. It can be This is a Moleskine, black Moleskine, sturdy. This is a Lloyd term, almost identical, slightly wider. Uh, right now I'm currently using a paper test designs notebook. It's got a pretty gilded edge, fancy paper. I keep it in a leatherbound notebooks to protect it because it's so fancy. But you literally don't need anything fancy. Like these work just as well. I like a

20:05 notebook with grids inside. So this is obviously a dot grid. By the way, speaking of mind mapping, here's a mind map. This is obviously a dot grid. I don't love dot grids very much. I much prefer um well, this is a dot grid, too. Maybe 2021 Rachel liked a dot grid. In any case, 2025 Rachel loves a an actual grid like this. kind of hard to see, but an actual grid like this. Um, because I feel like it's just easier for me to write, you know, every which way or to turn the book or to to draw, you know, squares and things when I'm drawing. So, I really like a grid notebook, a graph paper notebook, but any notebook that you'll actually use is the right one. The key to choosing something is that it

20:50 feels good to write in, but also it it isn't so precious that you're afraid to mess up a page. So that's why I like a a loy term or a moles skin because they're not too precious. But I worked my way up to using a very fancy like over $30 paper test designs notebook just because I'm so familiar with using notebooks at this point. I know how I like to use them and this didn't feel precious to me. It felt like instead something I had lying around because I had bought it to test it out. So now I'm using it for this purpose. So whatever you have in your house will work. Even if it's just like a simple like composition notebook or something like that that cost, you know, you like 10 bucks or $7 or however much composition notebooks cost in your area. Even if it's just something like this, this is a great thing to use, too. I will say that I prefer a larger size for a thinking notebook because and I

21:37 have used smaller sizes. So, this is a book that I carry around with me that I'm realizing I'm actually using as a thinking notebook. Um, I set it up like a capture system, but what I'm actually using it as is to solve problems on the go, which is very helpful to me. And I do solve problems in this. Like, for example, I was out on the town. Well, I was at a coffee shop and I was planning out a video. Was I planning out this video? Literally this one? Yes, I was planning out literally this video. Okay, that's crazy. So, I was planning out literally this video. And I was doing that all on paper here in different colors of pens, which I also really like to use in my thinking book. And then I wrote, you know, I had some thumbnail ideas, all this kind of stuff. But I just think that having a smaller surface means your thinking has to extend to

22:22 more pages. So this is one spread and then it had to extend into another spread because I just didn't have enough room on this spread to complete all the thinking I wanted to do compared to like an A5 size. Are there any blank pages in this notebook? There are literally no blank pages in this notebook. Okay, round of applause for me for actually finishing a notebook. So, you can see how like a larger notebook, I would be able to fit like twice the amount of information that's on this page onto this page. And I just prefer that. So, I prefer having a larger surface to really hammer out how I feel and really get everything out on one spread. But if you like a small notebook, more power to you. I will say for organization, I'm still figuring this out. But the best

23:08 method I have learned to figure this out is by experimenting with my smaller notebook. And I mentioned I was I I've been using this I also use it you know as a wallet which is why you see the cash flow. Um but I was using this as um a capture method for a while and I was I started using this index in the back. So you can do an index which I think is great. Uh I also numbered all the pages by hand. It's very tedious but I love what I do. And then you number it and then you have like a system over here or pages over here so that you can help it can help you find it. I find this to be hard to maintain. I've always found indexes to be hard to maintain. I keep setting them up but I find them hard to maintain. If you if you are an index person and that works for you, please use an index. I think it would be great. What I found

23:54 worked for me instead was actually a method that I used down here at the bottom. So, I will use a little X here at the bottom of my page. After I've done I've done my thinking on the page, I will X out the page number. And then I know that I have completed this page. And then these pages are really the types of pages that should go into an in index. I wrote inbox up here, but I meant to write index. Wow, you guys are getting the real real raw Rachel in this video. She makes mistakes because she's only human. Nobody's perfect in the uh great words of our Lord Hannah Montana. So when I finish working through a problem the way I finished working through this YouTube script, I actually just need to cross

24:41 off the page. Cross off the page. Cross off the page. Cross off the page. And now I know just at a glance, like thumbming through my notebook, that these pages are done. I don't need to use them anymore. Nothing of value is going to be on there. All of this thinking has been transferred into its permanent home. And then that's the crucial step, right? Once you have reached a conclusion or made a decision or done all of your thinking, then you have to transfer the key insights out of the thinking book and into their real home. And once you fully fill up a thinking book, you can just throw this away. It's it's done. I keep all my journals because I'm a sentimental person, but also because I have a YouTube channel and it really helps to show you guys examples like from previous years in my life when I was using things like a thinking book.

25:26 Honestly, how this came about was I was looking through my old journals and I was realizing, "Oh my god, I've been using my journals for years, my notebooks for years as thinking tools, as thinking books. I don't re-reference them. There's no permanent information kept in any of them. I just use them as thinking books and then I transfer that thinking elsewhere." And that's sort of how um this concept was born. I realized that I was and I was using a book I originally bought as a planner for like extended thinking and thinking through problems. Um, so I just took those habits and I put them into this video. And the most important one of those habits is just that you really need to move things out of your thinking book into your permanent home. Sometimes if it's like a date or an important task

26:13 that goes in my planner. If it's a YouTube channel note that goes in a shared note I have with my producer. If it's about like a quote that I really liked, you you might put it in a commonplace book where you keep those quotes or you might translate any feelings based journaling that you did to an actual journal, right? But the thinking book itself is just for the messy work of figuring things out. And once you figure it out, once that cloud in your brain, the bees that follow you around all day, once that cloud is cleared and you're you achieve mental clarity, then you are done with that thought. So anytime you are thinking about the same problem like three times in a row without making any progress, that is your cue to sit down with your thinking book and work through it on paper so that you can get to an

27:00 actionable solution. Your thinking book isn't meant to be pretty or permanent. It's meant to be a workspace for your mind. Remember, this isn't just journaling. It's outcome oriented thinking that actually moves you forward towards your goals. The magic happens when you take those clarified thoughts and move them into their permanent homes, whether that's your task manager, your notes app, or your next actions list. Start with a simple mind map or a brain dump, and see how it feels to actually think through problems on paper instead of letting them spin endlessly around in your head. For more about the benefits of paper planning and how to get started, I will leave a video right here on the screen next to my head about paper planning in a digital world. I think you'll like it. Thank you so much for watching, for being subscribed, for being awesome. I love you so much and I

27:48 will see you in the next one. Bye.