How I Learned to Stop Carrying Every Task in My Head
How I learned to stop multitasking badly, unload open loops, and turn daydreaming into grounded action
Last weekend I met with some of my close friends. I hadn’t seen them in a while, so it was nice to catch up, laugh, and just have fun.
Because of the time gap, there was a lot to talk about. One of the things that came up was my TEDx talk.
One of my friends told me, “I don’t really know how you do it,” alluding to the fact that I’m a dad, a husband, a software engineer during the day, and an author at night, when everybody goes to sleep.
Truth is, for a good while, I didn’t really know either.
Also, I don’t think this was always true about me.
We like to think that people who achieve things that seem hard to reach are overly ambitious, don’t rest, have endless energy, and are somehow built to tolerate chaos. That they can just embrace whatever comes and nail it.
I’m pretty sure people look at all I’m doing and think, this guy is disciplined. He just learned how to grind.
And well, frankly, the name of this publication, Self Disciplined, may mislead too.
I would be lying if I said I naturally describe myself as disciplined.
Hell, I’m still learning. The goal of writing this publication was to publicly share my learnings and growth around discipline, so I’m working on it. I’m developing my own worldview and sharing it with you, and I do think that has changed how I do things. It has brought results that a past version of me would not have imagined.
I’ve heard that kind of comment before. “How do you even do it?” “How do you find time?”
And while it’s flattering, people are mostly seeing the outcome of a process that took me a good while, and some big failures, to refine. At first unconsciously. Then more deliberately, once I became aware of it and started engineering it to serve me better.
Because before Self Disciplined, I was honestly pretty terrible at this.
Balancing things was not my forte. In fact, I was one of those people who would go all in on one thing, and then jump to the next shiny thing.
Self Disciplined has been one of the endeavors I’ve held onto the longest in years.
So how did I go from moving slowly, not taking much action, and not really delivering much, to actually getting stuff done?
And more importantly, what changed?
We don’t really multitask
Back then I would just pile on tasks. Because I had to, or so I thought.
I would put them down on a to-do list and try to keep up.
In some cases, I would even try to do things at the same time, thinking multitasking was the answer.
It wasn’t.
It actually produced worse results.
When we multitask, we are usually not cleanly doing multiple demanding things at once. We are moving fast between contexts, and every switch has a cost1.
This problem gets worse when one of those contexts is unfinished. Your brain does not always let go just because you moved on. Unfinished tasks tend to stay active in the background, pulling at your attention.
This explains why, when you move to a different task, part of your mind keeps going back to the previous one if you didn’t finish it.
Psychology has a name for this: the Zeigarnik effect2.
You leave one task, but part of your mind stays there.
That is why context switching feels so heavy when you do it badly. It is not only that you have many things to do. It is that the unfinished one becomes weight you carry into the next task without noticing it.
I think learning about this flipped how I treated my own context switching. I realized that this was precisely the problem I was having at work, at home, and with my personal projects: doing too many things, switching among all of them, finishing none, and thinking about all of them.
So I needed to do something about it.
How could I move between tasks without carrying unnecessary load?
Learning to unload
Because I was carrying context on each switch, I was naturally compounding cognitive load.
Of course, at certain points I would just get overwhelmed and resort to things like procrastination or mind-wandering as ways to blow off steam.
Some other times I’d just get irritable, and not very pleasant to be around.
The idea of journaling always felt attractive, and actually, when I started writing Self Disciplined, that’s how it felt: just journaling, in public. Somehow, all those latent thoughts started getting left on paper — well, digital paper — but they wouldn’t boggle me as much after doing so.
I realized that at work I was already documenting my research, and I would leave parts of the code commented to show myself where I was working so I could pick it up from that spot the next day.
I discovered Notion through work. I realized that I could use it for my own purposes, and decided to start taking organized notes about my day so I wouldn’t miss anything. To be frank, at first it was sort of obnoxious, because I wasn’t used to leaving notes to myself about the things I was doing. I would just build to-do lists and treat them as binary states: completed or not completed.
After a while, though, I started noticing something: I would think less and less about what was pending. I started trusting my notes, and with that I started completing the next tasks faster, mainly because the attention residue was not holding me back.
This makes sense scientifically too. Writing things down works as a form of cognitive offloading: it reduces the mental load of holding everything internally, which makes it easier to return to the next task with more of your attention available3
With time, I started feeling that while Notion is a very complete tool, it was not very flexible for how I like to write my notes. It was just a personal preference.
After a while, I moved to Obsidian.
I realized that by combining my note-taking with the power of AI, mainly Claude, I could 10x my progress, keep better track of stopping points, and move between contexts with ease.
Now, when I have distracting thoughts, I write them down and keep working. After doing that for a while, you start trusting that not everything has to stay in your head.
You start thinking less and less about what’s pending, and start thinking about what’s next.
👉 Want to actually train this, not just read it?
Each week, alongside this reflection, I publish a short practice guide — something you can work through in 10 minutes on a slow day, so the idea sticks when a hard day hits.
It’s called the Paid Companion. $9.99/month.
Getting out of the comfort zone
At this point, I’m carrying little context between tasks. I am actually able to do more.
I got more confident. I can work on my tasks with ease: I can handle my full-time employment, I can keep up with things at home, and I even established a system to work on Self Disciplined.
Something happens at this point: you start feeling capable of more.
And with that, some possibilities start to open.
When I started writing, some friends suggested I should write a book. They told me to think a bit more boldly about this idea I was brewing.
So I became bolder.
Then I learned about a tool called Boardy, which helps with warm introductions based on what you are looking for. This became instrumental in landing my TEDx talk opportunity.
Extraordinarily, far from intimidating me, all of this started to feel like an adventure in this new world. Like a quest. I decided to embrace it.
More and more ideas kept coming, and as I embraced my capacity to work on things, something else also grew: my tendency to daydream.
Biting the bullet
I have a tendency to daydream.
I can be in two places at a time and be in none at the same time.
I like to think about possible futures, for good or for bad.
I like to think about how I can implement the ideas that get into my head.
I like to listen and try to apply, in situ, new knowledge to my current flows.
And while all of that might foster my creativity, it also makes me less effective.
Way less effective.
I can be listening to you while thinking about how to apply something at work. Then I remember there are things I should have done that I didn’t do, and I start trying to address them in my head and keep them there so I don’t forget. A simple chit-chat can become a fictitious rabbit hole in my head, out of the blue.
Focusing was almost impossible.
Add parenthood to the mix, and the lack of sleep does its thing.
Before I started this journey, I was just a dreaming machine, but my brain didn’t have a stop button that helped me control when and where to do it.
It helps when you want to keep things running, or when you actually need to brainstorm ideas.
It doesn’t help when you want to play with your toddler on a Saturday at 8 a.m. after a rough night.
Well, at least that’s how it used to be. I still do it sometimes, but back then, let’s say three years ago, it would happen in every interaction, and in solitude even more.
The difference is that now I don’t just drift in it. I imagine, take note of it, assess whether it’s truly feasible, and then execute if it is.
Mind-wandering is common, and I actually talked about my own struggle with this more in depth in one of my articles. So this is not something we need to defeat.
It’s something we need to learn to return from.
I think that, for me, the catalyst for that return, for moving from daydreaming and stagnancy to actually acting, was technology.
A big part of my daydreaming came from imagining possible scenarios that I’d love to pursue, but for some reason wouldn’t. Create an app, write a blog, build a shop. I’m sure you have your own version of that too.
But now, with AI, as cliché as it may sound, what stops me?
What stops you?
Now, instead of just dreaming about the type of app I want to build and not building it for lack of time, I leave some time at the end of the day to prototype with Claude Code or Codex. If I have a product I want to sell in my shop, I go to Shopify and figure out how to get it done.
I virtually have no excuse.
I could still choose not to do these things, but what’s the point?
Here is what I discovered.
If I have to spend mental bandwidth on something, I would rather spend it on something real.
We all have limited cognitive resources4. At some point, attention starts to break down5.
When we daydream, we are still using our brains and taking up valuable mental bandwidth from other ideas or actions that are already happening. Interestingly, when you force yourself not to think about something, you are not shutting off your brain. You just send the thought to run in the background.
Trying to push away daydream-influenced thoughts doesn’t really save mental bandwidth. It just takes up space without returning much value in exchange.
So why not just do it?
That’s what I’ve been doing. I imagine, take note, assess, and execute.
Not everything will be feasible. But grounding your thoughts helps bring reason into the game and keeps you from daydreaming endlessly about things you won’t realistically be able to do.
I just bit the bullet.
Setting boundaries
One of the things I’ve mentioned a lot is that now I’m able to do more.
But my mental bandwidth is not infinite. There are only so many hours in the day, and I also have other things to do, like resting, which is just as important as executing your plans.
And one of the skills I’ve had to develop the most is prioritization: how to determine the order of your tasks, and whether tasks are worth completing.
The good news is that with the stack I’ve already mentioned, note-taking and AI, it becomes easier to prioritize. You practice it so many times that it starts to feel natural.
Now I’ve been able to extrapolate that at work, and into every aspect of my life.
I’ve learned to say not right now instead of saying no right away. And to eventually return to it. I’ve also learned to say no when the conditions don’t allow it, and to let it go.
At the end of the day, that’s discipline. Practicing that return, over and over.
And engineering your way into it by choosing the tools your brain works best with.
All of that takes learning. But once you learn about yourself, you can set boundaries that adjust to that, and that you can actually respect.
And when you can respect your own boundaries, you can enforce them with others as well.
Before you go
Changes like these don’t happen overnight. So don’t expect an epiphany.
Also I illustrate my personal change to show you that it’s possible. That if you are struggling with the same, you can train your brain to operate in a better way.
It’s not free, and you will have to spend some effort setting up a system to reduce friction.
I built Adaptable Discipline precisely with that reason in mind. Our brains all work differently, and we deserve the resources to reduce the friction that is keeping us from our best selves. If you are interested in the fundamentals that helped me establish this basic system to return to what matters, then check the guides.
And as always feel free to reach out if you have any question.
In our next paid companion we will train how to unload, prioritize, and return without carrying the whole day with you.
For now, maybe check out the resources I shared, it’s a great start.
I hope you have a wonderful week!
✨ Ideas Worth Exploring
If this piece resonated, here are a few more that go hand-in-hand.
Asuako, P. A. G., Stojan, R., Bock, O., Mack, M., & Voelcker-Rehage, C. (2025). Multitasking: does task-switching add to the effect of dual-tasking on everyday-like driving behavior? Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 10, 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-025-00646-7
Zeigarnik, B. (1938). On finished and unfinished tasks. In W. D. Ellis (Ed.), A source book of Gestalt psychology (pp. 300–314). Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Company. https://doi.org/10.1037/11496-025
Risko, E. F., & Gilbert, S. J. (2016). Cognitive offloading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(9), 676–688. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.002
Young, J. Q., van Merriënboer, J., Durning, S., & ten Cate, O. (2014). Cognitive load theory: Implications for medical education: AMEE Guide No. 86. Medical Teacher, 36(5), 371–384. https://doi.org/10.3109/0142159X.2014.889290
Langner, R., & Eickhoff, S. B. (2013). Sustaining attention to simple tasks: A meta-analytic review of the neural mechanisms of vigilant attention. Psychological Bulletin, 139(4), 870–900. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030694