What Is a Brain Dump?
Do you ever have those days where all the thoughts and to-dos flood your brain, and you can’t focus on the single task in front of you? I definitely have these days. For me, these overwhelming days stem from me procrastinating on too many tasks or trying to push too many things down the line. For instance, if work is particularly busy, I’ll punt on the laundry or tidying up. Then, all of a sudden all I can think about is how I need to sort my laundry and get it through the wash, and that I need to pick up this pile or wipe down that counter. It gets to the point that I can’t focus on the work in front of me until I do those other items.
That’s where brain dumping comes in handy. Instead of getting up to do the laundry or wipe down the counters or call to schedule a doctor’s appointment, I sit down with a journal (I prefer non-lined pages for brain dumps) and I scribble all the nonsense that’s floating around in my head on paper.
A brain dump allows you to get all the thoughts, tasks, and goals out of your head and into a format that you can actually do something with it. I like to take my messy brain dumps to add items to my planner or to make an actual to-do—daily and weekly—list I can benefit from.
Here’s what typically ends up on my brain dump pages:
Work deadlines and how I’m going to spread projects out over the amount of days I have to work on them
Paying bills/anything financial
Organizing receipts for tax purposes
Scheduling appointments
Travel
Fears
Short and long term goals
Items I’m avoiding doing
Spots that need to be organized
Items that need restocking
Future purchases I want to make
Areas I need to clean in the house
How to Brain Dump
Brain dumping doesn’t have to happen at a specific time of day. Morning or evening doesn’t matter. You don’t even have to do a brain dump on a schedule. Brain dumping can be used exactly when you need it, whenever you need it. Oftentimes, I do it when I need an immediate pressure release and I always feel less stressed and anxious when I’m done.
Write It Down
Write absolutely everything down that comes to your mind. What’s nagging at you? What do you need to get done ASAP? What tasks have you been putting off? What tasks are taking up space in your head but don’t need to be addressed right now? Don’t filter yourself. Let it all out on your pages. Draw pictures, use arrows and bullet points, circle items, connect similar thoughts with the same color highlighter. These pages don’t have to be pretty and don’t need to make sense to anyone but you.
Step Away From It
Then, step away from your brain dump pages for a bit—maybe that’s a few hours or even a week. Review all the items on your pages.
Organize It
From that unfiltered collection of thoughts, start to create some order to it all. Add “Schedule dentist appointment” to a specific day in your planner. Add work deadlines to your calendar and break the project into smaller tasks leading up to it. Create a weekly cleaning schedule for the house. Create a to-do list for the remainder of your day or for the upcoming week. The goal here is to turn the chaos that was in your head into actionable items you can cross off your list in the appropriate time.
I love brain dumping because it’s an immediate solve for my stress and anxiety. I keep everything in my head—goals, tasks, feelings, etc—and I’m not great at releasing those things from my brain. So, I get overloaded sometimes. Brain dumps let me get absolutely everything out of my head, and I feel better almost instantly. The act of putting words on paper helps me organize and sort through my thoughts. I can essentially file items away and put them in their rightful places as opposed to letting thoughts continue to float around in my head and clog my thoughts.
What I Use for My Brain Dumps
A drink in my Yeti tumbler
Music playing through my AirPods Pro
A to-do list to migrate tasks to (Similar)
The book Believe in Yourself and Do What You Love is a fun, short, inspirational book to help you navigate creating the type of days and weeks you want, which is also super helpful in mapping out your tasks and goals after your brain dump.