How Resetting Your Space Clears Your Mind

Do you ever sit down to start an important task only to realize you have to clean up yesterday's mess first? Or feel like you're already behind before you've even begun because your workspace, browser tabs, or to-do list are filled with unfinished business?

The clutter around us isn't just visual—it creates mental friction that quietly drains our energy, focus, and motivation. Whether it's a desk covered in papers, dozens of open browser tabs, or a mind full of unfinished tasks, every unresolved item competes for our attention. The good news? You don't need to organize your entire life to feel more in control. Sometimes all you need is a simple reset.

In this episode, Lisa introduces her powerful "Back to Neutral" approach—a practical end-of-day reset that's helped countless clients reduce overwhelm and begin each day with greater clarity and ease. She explains the science behind why unfinished tasks weigh so heavily on our minds, walks through the three essential areas to reset (physical, digital, and written), and shares a simple five-minute habit that can dramatically improve your focus, productivity, and peace of mind. You'll discover that creating a fresh start tomorrow begins with a small investment today.

This week, episode 325 of the Positively Living® Podcast explores how resetting your space clears your mind and shares a simple framework for reducing mental clutter so you can start every day with greater focus and less stress.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn why having to "do work before doing your work" quietly drains your energy and motivation.
• Discover Lisa's "Back to Neutral" method for creating a more productive starting point each day.
• Understand how unfinished tasks create mental tension through the Zeigarnik Effect.
• Learn why giving unfinished work an intentional home can calm your brain almost as effectively as completing it.
• Discover how a brief end-of-day reset creates a significant return on your time and energy investment.
• Explore the three essential reset areas: physical, digital, and written.
• Learn how visual clutter impacts your ability to focus, create, and make decisions.
• Discover why open browser tabs and overflowing inboxes are hidden sources of mental overload.
• Learn how creating a "mental bookmark" helps your future self get started without hesitation.
• Understand why your workspace doesn't need to be perfect—it simply needs to be workable.
• Discover how a daily mind sweep complements your physical reset by clearing mental clutter.
• Learn practical ways to capture ideas and unfinished tasks so your brain doesn't have to hold onto them.
• Explore a simple five-minute end-of-day routine that builds consistency without feeling overwhelming.
• Understand how small, intentional resets compound over time to reduce stress and improve productivity.
• Learn how creating a fresh starting point each day helps you work with more focus, confidence, and ease.

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the episode to post in your stories and tag me!  And don’t forget to follow, rate, and review the podcast and tell me your key takeaways!

Learn more about Positively LivingⓇ and Lisa at https://positivelyproductive.com/podcast/

Stop trying to fit into someone else’s productivity rules! Grab my free Productivity Toolkit, a collection of workbooks designed to help you explore how you work, uncover what truly matters to you, and create your very own energy-friendly systems. Get it here: www.positivelyproductive.com/plpkit

CONNECT WITH LISA ZAWROTNY:

Facebook

Instagram

Resources

Work with Lisa! 

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Decluttering Playlist on the Positively Living® Podcast

Free Guided Mind Sweep Workbook & Audio

Positively Productive Resources Library

Book a Clarity Call

Async Coaching

(Find links to books/gear on the Positively Productive Resources Page.)

Dance Song Playlist V1, V2, V3

Music by Ian and Jeff Zawrotny

Start your own podcast with Buzzsprout!

Request this Toolkit and other free resources at the Resources Page.

Transcript

Lisa Zawrotny: 0:20

One of the most aggravating and defeating scenarios that I know all too well is having to do work before you can do your work. It's one of the quieter drains on your energy and focus. You haven't even started what you're supposed to be working on yet, and you're already tired. You are listening to the Positively Living podcast. I'm your host Lisa Zorotne, founder of Positively Productive Systems and a productivity coach certified in positive psychology and stress management. Join me as we explore ways to live a more proactive, positive life with episodes on productivity, self-awareness, mindset, entrepreneur life, habits and systems, simplicity, fun, and more. I understand overwhelm personally as a multi-passionate entrepreneur, wife and mom to kids and cats, and as a caregiver. I'm here to help you choose what's right for you, so you can do less, live more, and breathe easier. Sound good? Let's get to it. Welcome to the Positively Living podcast. I'm your host Lisa, and today's episode comes directly from an approach I've used successfully with clients for years. If you've ever sat down to start your day and immediately felt behind because you're still sorting through what you left there yesterday. This episode is for you. One of the most aggravating and defeating scenarios that I know all too well is having to do work before you can do your work. It's one of the quieter drains on your energy and focus. You haven't even started what you're supposed to be working on yet, and you're already tired. Today, I want to share a concept that addresses this issue directly. I call it "back to neutral. And once you understand it, you'll start seeing opportunities to use it everywhere. Back to neutral isn't about having a perfectly clean space or constantly cleaning up after yourself, that might be your style, and that might work for you. But for many of us, we're not inclined to do that. So this is not about being tidy for the sake of being tidy. It's about resetting to a workable starting point and setting yourself up for success. It's about putting away what needs to be put away, so that when you return, you can get started right away. Think of it this way: when you walk into a kitchen and the counter is clear, you're ready to cook. When you walk in and last night's dishes are still everywhere, you have to do last night's work before you can do today's. The cooking hasn't started yet, and your energy is already going somewhere else. Now I'll admit you can still make it happen. I've cooked a lot of food in a dirty kitchen before, but you do it with drain. It's drain of your time and your motivation, having to clean a utensil before you can use it again, or feeling limited and crowded while you work, reminded of what still hasn't been done. All of that impacts the results, and more importantly, it impacts you while you're doing it. And this frustration adds up over time. The same thing happens at your desk or your creative space, like your art table or your music room, wherever you do the thing that matters to you. If you have to sort and search and clean before you can dig into what you're there for, you're not starting fresh. You're starting behind. Back to neutral is the practice that can change that. Here's what's happening in your brain when you leave things unfinished and unaddressed. Psychologist Bluma Zaggernick discovered in the 1920s that incomplete tasks create a kind of psychological tension. Your brain keeps those open threads active, pulling on your attention until they're resolved, we talk about this open task loop idea a lot in terms of our to-do lists and tabs that are open on the computer and just visual clutter everywhere. I know you felt this. It's the meeting you're still mentally in when you're trying to eat lunch. You you haven't left. It's the unprocessed to-do list sitting on the edge of your awareness while you're trying to be present somewhere else, your brain is doing exactly what it's designed to do. It's tracking what's unfinished. This is also another reason why I love talking about celebrating the closed task loops, the things that we've achieved. We tend to ignore that because the minute they're closed, we've moved on. So it's important to celebrate the things that we've accomplished. Yeah, our brains are focused on what's next, what's next, what's next. So what's useful to know is that you don't have to finish everything to get relief. Research shows that simply giving a task an intentional home. A plan, a note, a place to wait-like a task management system-can quiet that cognitive tension almost as effectively as completing it. It's still likely you have to get the task done, but that's encouraging to know that if you park it in the right place, it'll give your brain a break. Your brain just needs to know it won't be forgotten. I know that we fear that out of sight, out of mind, but that's only when we don't have a system to back us up. So back to neutral allows us to not have to finish everything, but to park things intentionally so our brain can properly focus on what it's meant to. One of the first times I coached this habit was with a client who ran a business involving a lot of physical supplies because she shipped a lot of things that she created. There was design work on her computer and a lot of tracking of customer orders. By the end of the day, she was exhausted, and the last thing she wanted to do was clean up. That resistance is completely understandable when you're spent tidying, feels like one more task added onto a list you didn't have the energy to finish in the first place. It's daunting, but this approach is about a return on investment for your effort. It's priming your productivity with small steps. I urged her to please give this a try. Just 10 minutes at the end of her workday, file the papers, close the tabs, update the order tracking, and make a note for tomorrow. And that's it. She had faith in my advice and tried it. The difference it made in a single day stopped her in her tracks. She told me later that looking back, it seemed obvious. Of course, that would help. But when you're deep in the day to day, it's exactly those small things that slip because you do feel so tired that you can't possibly do them, and then they build up. And when they build up, they quietly bury you. I've guided many clients toward this habit since, and the response is almost always the same surprise at how much a 10-minute reset changes how they feel when the next day begins. So, what does a reset actually involve? There

are three areas to focus on: 7:31

physical, digital, and written. The physical reset is the most visible and probably the one you'd think of first. This is clearing your surfaces, putting away files, returning things to where they belong, removing junk-you know, removing things that shouldn't be there-and on your desk that could be things that need to be tossed out. It could be, well, for me, all of the water bottles and the coffee cups and all the things because I have something to hydrate, something to caffeinate, possibly an emotional support beverage. So there's a lot of different cups and things like that. So you want to clear out all of those things that don't belong. Now this is tidying up. It doesn't have to be spotless. It just needs to be workable. You want to clear your desk because that invites you to do work, but it doesn't have to be a pristine desk. Just cleared, neat, set. This means closing notebooks. It means putting files away that don't necessarily have to be there, or stacking ones that you want to get to immediately. It's making specific choices for the space that you're going to need the next time you arrive, the digital reset is the one people most often skip, and it costs them. This is closing out tabs you don't need, and oh man, that is one that is a challenge for me. I'm reminded constantly of the meme where it's like my life is like my tabs, it's like there's 30 of them open, and I don't know where the music is coming from. This is like so true. So such a simple thing to do, and it makes a huge difference. You want to close out those tabs. You want to process what's sitting in your inbox, or at least tag or flag or star, right? Some kind of capture tool, so that you're making sure you know what you need to do tomorrow, and that you can find it. So those open browser tabs are open loops, and they pull on your attention even when you're not looking at them. So my suggestion is to close them out, especially if they're ones you don't need. But if you do need them, save the URLs. I save URLs of places that I want to go again in my task management system. I label it properly. I even set it to a different time when I'm going to check it, and this way I can close it out confidently. Know that I can get back there easily, and now I don't have it in my way as an open task loop that's going to be visual clutter, it won't distract me. And then there's the written reset part of it, and this might be the most important of the three because this is where you update your to-do list, close out what's done, and you set what I like to describe as a mental bookmark. This is a note to your future self about exactly where you're picking up next time. You're not leaving yourself a puzzle to solve in the morning or wondering what you're supposed to be doing. You're leaving yourself a starting point, and sometimes the easiest time to do that is when you are closing up the day before. So for me, this includes processing my rocket book. I review and put tasks in my management system if that applies, and I upload the pages of the rocket book to the proper folders if I haven't done that already, and then erase them so they're clean. A clean rocket book for me the next morning is a very inviting space to work. Now I might have one page that I've written on dated for the next day with notes, if that's beyond the scope of what I might find in my calendar or task management system, and this only takes a few minutes, especially since a lot of the notes for clients and podcast guests are ones that I immediately upload into proper folders as part of that process. But I just make sure everything's been uploaded and checked off and cleaned, and it's one of the most satisfying things I do because I know clean pages that greet me the next day are the best way for me to work. As you can see, there are a variety of ways to get back to neutral in your space. It can vary from space to space, purpose to purpose, and from day to day. Whatever your version of this process looks like, the goal is the same: close the day knowing exactly where tomorrow starts. When the clutter is more in your head than on your desk, like a backlog of tasks and worries and things you don't want to forget and half-formed thoughts, you'll want to add in a mind sweep. A mind sweep is a mental decluttering practice where you get everything out of your head and onto paper, so your brain can stop holding it. It's not the same as back to neutral, but these two work beautifully together. So I highly recommend it as a bonus activity. The reset clears the space around you. The mind sweep clears the space inside you. I have a guided mind sweep package on my resources page that includes a guided audio, a workbook, and support for actually processing what comes up. If you've ever felt like your brain just won't quiet down, that's a good place to start, and you can find it at positivelyproductive.com/resources. If you want to try the back to neutral approach this week, here's a simple version. At the end of your next workday, set aside five minutes before you close up. Use that to clear one surface like your desk. Quickly check your to-do list and add anything you need, and write one line about where you're picking up tomorrow, or maybe the priority that you want to start with. Just one thing, and then close out whatever digital tabs or tools you don't need overnight, so you can start fresh. That's it. That's the reset. Start with five minutes of your time, and see how it feels the next morning, and then the next, because you want to keep repeating that very same simple version, five minutes only, until it becomes a habit. Now, eventually, you can expand upon that if you want. But honestly, if you have that habit alone that you keep doing consistently, you are going to see a huge change. If you'd like more podcast episodes relating to this topic, like about the mind sweep and about different kinds of decluttering, for example, go to positivelyproductive.com/podcast and use the keyword search. You might also appreciate the dedicated playlist I have there for decluttering as it pertains to different kinds of clutter that connect back to the back to neutral zones: the physical, the mental, the digital. And if the mind sweep sounds like something you need and you'd like to check out as well, again, positivelyproductive.com/resources. You can find free and paid resources of all kinds. There, everything that we talk about on the podcast, and that's it for today. So here's to giving your future self a better space to work in, and to feeling the energy of a fresh start.