How to Do a Brain Dump to Be More Productive
Brain dumping is a mental health tool because when you start to feel stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed, doing a brain dump is a great strategy to help you cope and take action rather than ruminate on something.
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ How to use brain dumping to be more productive
I talk about using brain dumps often over on Instagram but I never realized that if it’s not a tool you’ve used before, it can seem overwhelming to just stare at a blank page of paper and wonder what to do.
Before I teach you how to brain dump, let’s talk about what it is.
“A brain dump is when you dump out the contents of your brain onto a blank page so you can sort through it all and prioritize everything. Think about it as decluttering for your mind! I use brain dumps for:”
I think about organizing a drawer or a closet. I just did this with my office closet. I cannot leave everything in the closet and try to organize it that way. I get frustrated - maybe you can relate. What works better for me is taking everything out of the closet so I can see it all and actually sort through it by creating piles: trash, keep, donate.
If I try to organize the contents of the closet while leaving everything in the closet, I’m tempted to just shuffle things around rather than actually sort through it. When I take everything out of the closet, I’m forced to decide,” Okay is this worth putting back in the closet - does it deserve space in the closet?”
This is how I imagine brain dumping working, too – it puts us in the position to get everything out of our minds that is bogging us down so we can look at it, process it, and decide where it belongs.
When you have so many thoughts running through your head, it’s hard to concentrate on any one of them. And that’s when we start procrastinating which sucks for your mental health and for your productivity. Things in our minds tend to feel way bigger/more daunting when we keep them floating around in our minds than when we get them out and look at them on paper. When you brain dump, think of it as opening up a valve in your mind so you can spill out things that are stressing you out or thoughts that are nagging you. After writing these things out you can usually physically feel the pressure inside of you lessening.
I use brain dumping to help with:
👉🏼 Planning new projects
👉🏼 Lowering my stress levels
👉🏼 Prioritizing tasks
What works best for me is using a plain-lined notebook. I have one that I keep on my desk, with my planner, and I actually call it my brain dump notebook. If you’re a digital kinda person, maybe this looks like opening up a blank Google doc.
Now when I’m brain dumping – anything goes. My brain dump notebook is meant to be messy. I don’t worry about writing straight or pretty or my spelling. The purpose is just to get things out of my mind, creating more space for me to be an action taker.
Usually, once I finish brain dumping, I take the info I dumped and transfer it to a more organized place, which we’ll talk about in a minute.
Types of Brain Dumps:
If I’m planning a new project this is how I brain dump:
I open to a fresh spread in my lined notebook and write the name of the project at the top of the page. I start writing down every single thing that I need to do for this project. I don’t worry about the order or how detailed I’m getting, I just let myself write out any task that I know needs to be done to accomplish this new project.
Most of the time, when I’m planning a new project, it’s work-related so I take my messy brain dump and transfer it to the project management system that I use with my team called ClickUp. In there, I’m able to create to-do lists for different people on my team with deadlines attached to each task.
But if I just sit down and open ClickUp and try to plan a new project right in there, for whatever reason, I get overwhelmed and my brain feels stuck. The act of brain dumping everything out on paper first helps me so much and then I can just open up ClickUp and organize everything in there.
So let’s do an example:
If I’m going to create a new course, I get out my brain dump notebook and it might look like this:
⋒ Write course content
⋒ Record course videos
⋒ Create workbook
⋒ Have workbook designed
⋒ Write sales page
⋒ Have sales page designed
⋒ Plan marketing strategies for launch (emails, Instagram lives)
⋒ Add course to Kajabi (create, add to course library page, add offers)
Once I put this in ClickUp, I can see everything organized and it’s a solid starting point. I can then start to create sub-steps for the bigger steps and build a launch timeline.
If I’m feeling stressed out or overwhelmed this is how I brain dump:
I open up to my brain dump notebook and start writing, stream of consciousness style. This type of brain dumping is less task-oriented and more like just untangling my brain. I used to do this in my journal but I noticed that I found myself holding back because I wanted to keep my journal “neat.” I use the free-write page in my journal to write prayers and affirmations but for some reason, I don’t like using it for brain dumping.
Ever since doing this “stream of consciousness” style of writing in a brain dump notebook when I feel stressed out, it helps me to relax my mind and to see that a lot of the thoughts I’m having running rampant in my mind don’t deserve to be taking up space.
When we clear out thoughts that are taking up brain space but not serving our vision, we make more space for thoughts and ideas that actually do align with our vision. There is only so much capacity in our minds and doing brain dumps allows us to make sure that what we’re keeping up there is worthy of being there.
With this kind of brain dump, I view it as a more emotional experience so if something really stood out to me while I was writing, I’ll grab my journal to flesh it out a little bit more if I feel like it’s something I want to dig deeper into.
So let’s do an example – I usually do this kind of brain dumping when I feel internally heavy. When I feel like I have a weight on my shoulders and just need to get some stuff off my chest.
I’d grab my notebook and just start writing every single thing that is bothering me…big or small. It might look like:
⋒ I don’t like how the conversation with my friend ended yesterday. I feel like I may have made her feel invalidated when she was sharing a struggle with me.
⋒ I’ve been feeling inadequate when it comes to pursuing my dreams lately. I feel like I don’t have enough wisdom or experience to take the next step.
⋒ I feel like a bad mom because I bought cookies for the bake sale instead of making them from scratch.
Once I get everything out, I read back through it. Sometimes when you read something off of a paper you realize just how not true it is and you’re able to move past it quickly at that moment or as I said earlier, it might sting when you read it so you might want to dig deeper into that one by journaling through it more or talking to someone about it. Or if it’s something you want to take action on, like maybe apologizing to your friend, you can move forward with that.
Like I said earlier, this type of brain dumping really helps me to audit my thoughts so that I’m letting limiting beliefs stay up there without being processed and dealt with.
If I need to prioritize my tasks this is how I brain dump:
If I find myself thinking thoughts like “omg there is so much that needs to be done how can I fit it all in?” I use a method called The Eisenhower Matrix. This method helps me see what can be done now and what actually can be put off to a later time.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a simple decision-making tool that helps you make the distinction between tasks that are important, not important, urgent, and not urgent. It splits tasks into four boxes that prioritize which tasks you should focus on first and which you should delegate or delete.
Now, this is not my method, it’s just one that helps me prioritize my tasks.
I open up my brain dump notebook to a blank spread and on the left side, I start writing every task that pops up in my mind that I think needs to be done in no particular order.
On the right page, I draw this:
I go down the task list on the left, one by one, and start writing it in the appropriate box that it fits in.
Once I complete this kind of brain dump, I grab my planner and put the tasks on my Catch-All Task list. Vetting the tasks using this system first, keeps my Catch-All Task List from collecting a bunch of random/unimportant tasks which in turn, keeps me from feeling overwhelmed.
So let’s do some example tasks to get your wheels turning:
The left side of my paper might look like:
⋒ Schedule tax appointment (This would go under Important/Urgent/Do - top left box)
⋒ Fix the bathroom ceiling (Important/Not Urgent/Schedule - top right box)
⋒ Add new video to course (Not important/Urgent/delegate - bottom left box)
⋒ Redo Youtube playlists (Not important/not urgent/delete - bottom right box)
And there you have it! This is how I use brain dumps to help with my productivity.
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If you enjoyed this blog post, tune into episode 113 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to dive deeper into this topic:
