Background Processes:  How much emotional capacity are they consuming?

Have you ever looked at all the processes running in the background on your computer?  You can see them in Task Manager. 

Some of them are recognizable and necessary.  But there are probably a bunch that don’t need to be there.  Some may have been put there by advertising platforms, some may be remnants of old programs you used years ago.

Each one consumes your computer’s finite CPU and memory capacity.  Each one is jockeying for position in the hierarchy of tasks.

If you’re able to take the time to identify and eliminate the unnecessary background tasks, your computer’s performance improves.  Software runs faster.  You can open and work on bigger files without waiting forever (measured in seconds nowadays) for them to load. 

How many meaningless or unnecessary background processes do you have running in your life? 

How many of these processes consume valuable emotional capacity in your head? 

How many are sapping your energy, your creativity, your productivity, or your ability to think deeply about a subject?

Our minds are amazingly powerful.  They can provide incredible clarity and understanding.  They can energize and motivate us to push into new frontiers, explore our limits, and hone our craft beyond all outside expectations. 

But if we allow our mind to be clouded, to waste its valuable processing power on dumb things, unnecessary background processes, or dramas that have nothing to do with us, all that amazing power is wasted. 

Our understanding and motivation about what we’re doing, both now and in the future, will become cloudy and fragmented.  It’s easy to see how this can lead to a sense of hopelessness…a sense that there’s nothing for us in the future except for more cloudiness and confusion.

Consider all the distractions we allow to get in the way of our clear thinking. 

How many can we eliminate?  How many can we channel in a productive direction, or remove entirely from our lives?

It’s worth our finite time to do a “background process audit” in our life.  See just how much of our emotional capacity is being wasted without adding any real value to our lives. 

It won’t be easy.  These meaningless background processes are desperate to continue living in our head. This audit will require self-awareness, introspection, and sometimes difficult decisions about what to eliminate. 

The payoff for all this effort? 

Mental clarity for the things that truly matter, increased productivity, and a more hopeful view of our future.

p/c – Justin Tietsworth – Unsplash