Brain dumping is not a new concept, I’m sure it has been around for as long as we’ve started to draw or write. People in the past few years have really started to pick this topic back up. Maybe it’s due our constant tech addiction that’s making us more disorganized than we’ve ever been. Whatever the case may be it is for certain that people have started to pick up this habit again.
So I assume you’re reading this because you want to know how to do it yourself. There’s nothing special with this method, there are no complex techniques that you need to follow. Just some guidelines that’ll help you get the best out of your brain dumping.
You need to understand that your brain is not a good storage device. Any thoughts, tasks, ideas, reminders, random thoughts, or worries that you keep in there will keep looping back again and again, draining your mental focus and energy.
Dumping all these thoughts in a place that you trust breaks this loop. The moment a thought appears you can write it down and offload it into this trusted place. or write it down temporarily and offload it in the morning when you have the most energy.
When you first do it, you’ll realize that there’s so much floating in your head. You’ll see that by the end, like 15 minutes later; you’d have written down most of the important things. You don’t need to write a big article of each of them, just enough that you understand properly what you wrote and that’s enough.
Like -
- “Call X tomorrow regarding Y”
- “I worry about A happening”
- “I keep thinking about this Idea…”
You’ll notice that, usually you’ll automatically start with things are up on your priority and work your way down. This doesn’t have to be the case always, but we tend to give importance to the most important thing first, that’s just how our brain works from a survival standpoint but, that same part of our brain is also a short term thinker so the priorities might be jumbled up.
You don’t need a proper structure or complicated system. Just dump it all out in one place. Just doing this simple thing will make you feel lighter because you’re not keeping 10 important things in your head. It’s all written down where you can quickly see it.
Simple steps to get the most out of brain dumping -#
- Write your thought in one place - It can be a notebook, notes app, Obsidian, etc.
- Immediate Offloading - Try to write down your thoughts as soon as possible. When you’re new to this, you’ll likely think that you can do it later only to forget it when you sit to write it down and remember it again when you’re busy. Don’t worry too much about “is it important enough to write down”, you can always delete it or scratch it out later.
- Do A Quick Review Everyday - Take a glance at what all you wrote today. what needs to be deleted, acted upon, or sorted.
Do this consistently and you’ll see that the noise in your head disappears. You’ll be more focused when working on tasks. You’ll also have lots of things written down which will work as a second brain that will help you think, create, understand, etc.
The less brain is used for remembering, the more brain is available for thinking.
