Compartmentalization is sometimes described in a negative light, because it means splitting your cognition and thinking in separate areas, especially when they conflict with each other. Of course, there are caveats that these conflicting thoughts can cause serious mental and emotional disagreements if they are separated and compartmentalized. At less extreme levels, however, compartmentalization can be a positive mechanism for coping with and enriching life. This would include dividing work from private life, so that the place you live is not contaminated by professional stress. Here's how to compartmentalize and manage your daily life better.
Steps
Part 1 of 2: Compartmentalize Efficiently
Step 1. Understand compartmentalization
Sometimes it is necessary to set limits based on the physical or mental environment a person is in. An example would be a rescuer on duty who has to put his personal belongings aside and deal with an emergency. Sometimes these limits have to be very strict and necessary. Other times, they may be the result of not too careful decisions and sometimes it is a question of survival (an individual who, for example, buries the memories of a trauma suffered during his childhood).
Step 2. Knowing when to compartmentalize will help you control and make decisions about how, why, how much and when to compartmentalize
Sometimes it is appropriate to do so, other times less so.
For example, you may need to separate your home and work to prevent the negativity of one from affecting the other. In this case, however, it would be a question of controlling the overlap, intentionally keeping it to a minimum, so that your home life does not receive too strong an impact from your professional one
Step 3. Separate the minimal and limited thought streams to a certain time interval
Avoid compartmentalizing the large areas of thought that make you who you are.
- For example, living a double life, one with your family and another with your lover, when one of your greatest values is supporting the integrity of your family life, could lead to hard-to-manage ramifications on your ladder. values, and in both lives that you compartmentalized.
- The lower spheres might concern, for example, a person who is both a surgeon and a hospital director. The roles are certainly different, but by compartmentalizing you will be able to properly manage both and reduce the amount of overlap between the two.
Step 4. Find a way to make a transition between compartments
Create a system to support separation so your compartmentalization will be effective. Recognize when one group of thoughts mixes with another and remind yourself what your role is and what your priorities are at that given moment. It is unlikely that you will be able to snap your fingers and move from compartment to compartment, but you can come up with a routine to achieve it, such as taking a walk or driving for 10 minutes, which helps clear your mind and move from one compartment to another. thing to the other.
- If you are making a transition from work to home, tell yourself that you will need to stop thinking about your profession at the end of the trip from the office; you can start reconsidering it the next day.
- Many college students often know how to do this with skill. The feeling of boredom caused by a course that a student does not like can disappear when he goes to the next lesson, where he will participate fully because he is passionate about it.
Step 5. Understand that these compartments are in your psyche for a purpose
Make sure you always have control over that separation, and that it doesn't become a reflection of a defense mechanism. Remember that just because you are moving from one compartment to another does not mean that you are avoiding your feelings or impulses, it just means that it is not productive to think about the other area of your life right now. a second time.
Step 6. Avoid multi-tasking
If you want to compartmentalize as smoothly as possible, then forget about multi-tasking, especially between compartments, however tiny each action is. You may think that calling your wife to handle some of the stress at home during the lunch break isn't going to break the flow of the work compartment, but this will make you feel more anxious and less productive during office hours. Of course, if you really have to deal with a private matter, you shouldn't keep it waiting too long, but if you can put it aside for later, you'll be more focused on what you're doing.
Avoid multi-tasking even in the same compartment. It may actually make you less productive and won't get you completely immersed in any individual tasks
Step 7. Devote extreme concentration to each area and move on to another task only when you have finished this task
When you are located in one of your compartments, you should give 110% of your energy. Put away your cell phone and other distractions and immerse yourself fully in that assignment, whether it's preparing a presentation for work or spending quality time with your daughter. Whenever another thought comes up, you just say "I'll come back to it at a more productive time for this assignment." If you give your full concentration to the activity you are doing, you will be able to finish it faster, then move on to the next.
Set a time limit for yourself. You say "I will work on Project A for an hour before I take care of Project B". This will put more pressure on you to fully immerse yourself in Project A for as long as you can
Step 8. Learn to compartmentalize difficult news
If you have heard of devastating or complex news, then you should put aside all your obligations and refrain from carrying them out. But, if you want to compartmentalize, you can say to yourself, "I will give two hours of my time to this situation. I will write, consider or say everything I think or feel about it before I move on. This does not mean that I have fully dealt with the situation. question or that I have put my pain aside, it means that I will think about it for as long as necessary before I linger too long or feel worse. life".
Step 9. Remember that you can always go back to any compartment
Let go of the feeling that you have to deal with every crisis, problem or situation as soon as it occurs, otherwise, if you don't solve anything, you will feel broken for the whole day. Sure, an unresolved crisis at work is a real nuisance, but you won't be able to find a solution until you meet your boss tomorrow, so take a deep breath, tell yourself you'll solve it when you can really deal with it, and think about the next one. thing to do.
Step 10. Ask yourself what you can do about this situation by thinking about it further
You had a fight with your girlfriend. Your son was accused of theft. Your boss just assigned you a new project and so far it hasn't gone well. Either way, you are not in a position to do anything about it right now. So what do you do? Do you sit for hours thinking about it, imagine the worst and revive all the furious thoughts? Absolutely not. Instead, you can ask yourself, "How can my thoughts improve this area of my life?" Probably, it is impossible. If thinking doesn't solve anything, then move on to your next task and find a magical solution later.
Step 11. Ask yourself, "How much would my productivity improve if I didn't think about these things right now?"
. You are likely to get much more done at work if you stop thinking about the fight with your daughter; you would be able to clean the house much faster if you didn't worry about the uneventful dialogue you had with a co-worker. Not thinking about these things when you can't do anything to fix them may actually give you the opportunity to spend more time on everything you need to do.
Step 12. Maintain a balanced life
If you want to truly compartmentalize, then you need to have a balanced and stable existence, where you feel you have control over your family, career, health and other areas that are important to you. If you feel that your personal life is going wild, all hell breaks loose at work every day and you can't sleep for more than three hours a night because of all of this, you need to take care of these situations to feel calmer. quiet and at peace in all areas of your life.
Once you feel that you are relatively in control of all aspects of your life, then you can really start compartmentalizing
Part 2 of 2: Maintaining Control
Step 1. Avoid compartmentalizing too much
Feeling that your life is broken into too many pieces or not being able to unpack when you want to mean that you are losing control over how you keep aspects of your existence separate. Over time, this could cause serious psychological problems.
If you are married and your wife has never met any of your friends or co-workers, your compartmentalization is getting out of control
Step 2. Make sure you are comfortable with the crossings between the different compartments in your life
Losing control over how you separate your life and thoughts can become habitual. If that happens, when aspects of your daily life overlap, things can become complicated or even unmanageable. You will feel unusually exposed, and when members from different spheres of your existence meet, they may often feel that when they mention you, it seems like they are not even talking about the same person.
Step 3. Know when to say enough
If your life is divided into numerous pieces and the representation of different feelings and various "masks" confuses you, stop compartmentalizing. # * Losing control, as stated earlier, leads to enormous efforts to compartmentalize or to a great fear of the possibility of two or more segments of your existence coming into contact with each other.
This is bad for open and honest relationships and raises suspicion in people, who are inflexiblely assigned to one segment or another of your life
Step 4. Maintain both awareness and control over these separations
Know that you are doing this simply to increase your satisfaction and productivity, this is what effective compartmentalization is for. While you don't encourage references to your work when you are at home, you also don't have to think that it is problematic or difficult to answer a direct question asked by a family member about it, such as what did you do on a given day or how did one go. meeting.
Step 5. Say no to things that don't deserve a compartment
One way to stay in control of your compartmentalization is to not burden yourself with commitments, so don't try to compartmentalize too many different aspects of your life. Don't get involved in a demanding activity like being the president of an association or volunteering to help a friend remodel their entire home if your heart isn't up to it. Chances are, if you're trying to compartmentalize, chances are you already have a lot to do, so try to minimize commitments when you can.
- If you are already managing three projects at work for example, then learn to say no when given the chance to dedicate yourself to a fourth.
- Take a look at your agenda. If you really want to say yes to a new challenge, examine it to see if you can leave something out of your life.
Advice
- Stop compartmentalizing if you find yourself rationalizing why you can't spend an hour or evening discussing all aspects of your life with someone you love.
- Effective compartmentalization is not feasible for everyone. If you find that it's not for you, then avoid it.
- Effective compartmentalization is not about hiding your wholeness, but it is a way to increase productivity at school, at work and at home.
- Allow various aspects of your life to join together for short periods to inhibit counterproductive behaviors and thoughts. This also keeps it cohesive.
- Using the image of drawers to store files in your head can help you achieve this. When that lesson you hate ends, close the drawer to do something else.
- Try to be almost always aware of who you are and what you do. If you should feel that an area of your life is a secret, start methodically removing the barriers placed within your compartmentalized existence, because obviously it does not help you based on its original purpose, which is to give you a hand to dedicate yourself to the various areas. of everyday life without distractions.
- Allowing the different aspects of your life to separate clearly from each other without the opportunity to meet, indeed, they move further and further away, indicates that compartmentalization has taken over. It's fracturing your life instead of organizing it, and that's troubling.
Warnings
- If others say phrases like "I don't recognize you anymore," it is a sign that your compartmentalization is not working effectively, but you are starting to have a shattered personality.
- If you have been diagnosed with a disorder such as multiple personality, borderline, or dissociation, do not take this path. It could cause more significant symptoms, which would make your condition worse.
- Feeling depersonalized or realizing that you no longer know who you are is a decisive wake-up call, which indicates that you are losing control over compartmentalization.
