The Invisible Mental Load

Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you were there?

Of course you have. I think I do it several times a day.

Recently, I was placing an online supermarket order. As I reviewed my cart, I remembered something else I needed to add. I finished scrolling through the list, reached the bottom, and maybe thirty seconds later, I could not remember what it was.

It was completely gone.

I sat there trying to force it back into my brain, and I could actually feel myself starting to panic.

How could I forget something that quickly?

But maybe the real question was not, “What is wrong with my memory?”

Maybe it was, “How much am I asking my brain to hold?”

Sometimes I lie in bed thinking about everything I need to remember the next day.

Pick up a prescription.

Make a doctor’s appointment.

Call the plumber.

Pay a bill.

Call my mother.

Schedule the car service.

Follow up with someone who has not gotten back to me.

Buy something I need for an upcoming appointment.

My brain starts to feel like one giant storage unit filled with unfinished tasks.

Some of those tasks are important. Others are tiny. But when they are all competing for space at the same time, my brain does not seem to care which is which.

They all feel urgent.

They all feel like something I might forget.

And they all keep taking up space.

I have been a widow for three and a half years. My husband handled most of the maintenance around our house.

I was always the money person, so I was fortunate in that regard. I did not suddenly have to learn how to pay the bills or manage our finances. But I did have to learn about all kinds of other things that I had never handled.

I live in a fairly large house that is twenty seven years old, and lately it seems as though everything is going wrong.

Sometimes I do not even know what needs to be done, much less who I am supposed to call.

I have been thinking about selling my house to reduce my expenses, so my real estate agent suggested hiring a home inspector. The idea was to find out what potential buyers might ask me to repair.

Unfortunately, the inspector gave me quite a list.

There were small things, larger things, cracks in the foundation, a structural engineer to contact, and something involving the landscaping and gutters that I still do not fully understand.

Suddenly, I was not only carrying everything I already had to remember. I also had a whole new list of people to call, appointments to schedule, estimates to collect, and decisions to make.

Then, during a terrible heat wave, my air conditioner stopped working.

The company gave me options for replacing it, but I had no idea what they were really telling me.

Which system did I need?

What questions should I ask?

Was I being given all the information?

Was there something else in the house I should be servicing that I had completely overlooked?

That one broken air conditioner led my mind to every other appliance, system, filter, warranty, repair, and maintenance task in my home.

That is how the mental load works.

One task rarely stays one task.

Widowhood certainly added to my mental load, but I do not think that is the only reason I feel this way.

Women are often the people who remember what keeps a family running.

We remember birthdays, gifts, medical appointments, school forms, prescriptions, haircuts, family schedules, food shopping, holiday plans, and the dozens of things that need to happen before anyone else even realizes they need to happen.

When my children were young, we spent Christmas with my friend’s family.

I bought the gifts, wrapped them, packed them, hid them in the back of the car, and covered them with blankets so the children would not see them.

My younger son’s birthday is December 31, so I was also planning his birthday while handling everything else that came with the holiday season.

My husband did not take care of any of it.

It was simply understood that I would.

That kind of responsibility becomes so normal that we stop noticing how much work it is.

Years later, I see it with my adult sons. Something as ordinary as getting a car serviced can feel like a major project when you have never had to figure it out before.

Where do you go?

When do you go?

What work does the car need?

How do you know whether the recommendation is legitimate?

Who do you trust?

There is so much information involved in running a life that we do not even recognize as information anymore.

We simply carry it.

I have tried to organize myself many times.

I created daily planning sheets that included my tasks and the steps I needed to take toward my personal and business goals. I used them for quite a while.

Then I went on vacation and stopped.

Now the binder is sitting across the room.

I have a list on one piece of paper, another list in a notebook, reminders on my phone, information in my email, and random thoughts that I send from one email address to another so I will not forget them.

At the moment I send the email or write the note, I think I am helping myself.

But instead of feeling organized, I feel scattered.

The information exists somewhere. I just do not always know where.

Sometimes we assume this means we are bad at organizing our lives.

Maybe it simply means there is too much to organize.

The goal may not be to improve our memories or create a perfect system.

The goal may be to give our brains more space.

Think about what you are carrying in your mind right now.

Is there a bill you need to pay?

An appointment you need to schedule?

Something in your home that needs to be repaired?

A person you need to call?

A birthday gift you need to buy?

A prescription you need to refill?

A question you need to remember to ask?

A task you are waiting for someone else to complete?

Every unfinished reminder competes for a little bit of your attention.

Even when you are not actively thinking about it, some part of you is trying not to forget it.

That is exhausting.

The answer is not to try harder to remember everything.

It is to create a place you trust enough that you no longer have to.

I am working on this in real time. I do not have a perfect system to recommend.

In fact, I recently opened Google Tasks and discovered lists I had created in 2023.

Clearly, I have tried this before.

But Google is a much larger part of my daily life now. I use Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Calendar, so I decided to try again.

My biggest problem is that I have three calendars that need to be combined. Once I do that, I can use recurring calendar entries for anything that happens on a regular schedule.

Furnace maintenance in the fall.

Air conditioning service in the spring.

Insurance payments that come twice a year.

Annual appointments.

Anything that needs to happen at a particular time can go on the calendar once and repeat automatically.

Then I started creating lists in Google Tasks.

One list is for things I need to do this week.

Another is for things I am waiting for.

At the moment, I am waiting for a landscaper to send me an estimate and a structural engineer to schedule an appointment. I am also waiting to hear back from the friend who cuts my hair.

These tasks were taking up space in my head even though there was nothing I could do about them yet.

Writing them down gave me permission to stop checking for them mentally.

I also created a list for later. Those are things I do not need to deal with now but do not want to forget.

That one list might be the most helpful of all.

As I write this, I am preparing for neck surgery.

There are things I need to finish beforehand, things I need to buy, questions I need to ask, and arrangements I need to make.

I need button down shirts because I will not be able to pull shirts over my head during recovery.

I need to bring my car to Honda.

I need to prepare a list of questions for my surgeon because new questions keep popping into my mind.

I am also trying to complete as much work as possible before the surgery.

You may not be preparing for surgery, but perhaps you have felt the same way before a vacation, a move, a holiday, a family event, or a major work deadline.

We try to get everything in order so we can finally relax.

But as we rush to finish everything, our minds become even more crowded.

That is exactly when we need a place to put the thoughts as they arrive.

My phone is almost always with me.

My scraps of paper are not.

That alone makes a simple digital system more likely to work for me than another notebook or binder.

The best system is not necessarily the fanciest one.

It is the one you will actually have with you when you need it.

We often think organization is about being neat or productive.

For me, it is becoming more about reducing stress.

As soon as I put several tasks into Google Tasks, I felt some relief.

The tasks were not completed.

The landscaper had not called.

The structural engineer had not scheduled the appointment.

I had not purchased the shirts or taken my car in for service.

Nothing had changed except the location of the reminder.

It was no longer my brain’s responsibility to keep repeating it.

That small change allowed me to let it go for the moment.

The system was remembering it for me.

This is where the idea of sprinkles comes in.

Please do not sit down and try to organize your finances, medical records, home maintenance, family schedule, business, car information, passwords, warranties, appointments, and every unfinished task in your life at the same time.

That would probably make you feel more overwhelmed, not less.

Choose one category.

Maybe it is your medical information.

Maybe it is your home maintenance.

Maybe it is your finances.

Maybe it is the tasks you need to complete this week.

Set aside twenty minutes and move the information for that one area into one place.

That is enough.

You can choose another category later.

Small shifts are more likely to last because they give us a chance to see what actually works in our real lives.

Look at everything you are trying to remember today and ask yourself one question:

What can I take out of my head and put somewhere I trust?

You do not need a perfect app.

You do not need a complicated planner.

You do not need a color coded system with fifteen categories.

You simply need one place where your brain knows it can safely put something down.

I am still figuring out what that place will look like for me.

Maybe I will organize my lists by home, car, personal life, business, and medical needs. Maybe I will discover that fewer categories work better. Maybe I will fall away from the system again and have to begin another time.

That is okay.

A system does not have to be permanent to help you now.

I am beginning to understand that peace does not come from knowing I will remember everything.

It comes from trusting that I do not have to.

We are all carrying enough already.

Maybe it is time to put a few things down.

Choose one area of your life that feels crowded or disorganized.

Set a timer for twenty minutes.

Create one trusted place for the reminders, dates, information, and unfinished tasks connected to that area.

Then notice whether your mind feels even a little quieter.

You do not have to organize your whole life.

Just take one thing out of your head.

Do you have a system that helps you manage your mental load?

Leave a comment and tell me what works for you. You may have the idea that helps the rest of us finally stop carrying everything in our heads.

-Debbie Weiss

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