· 4 min read
Brain dump: how to empty your head onto paper in 10 minutes
What a brain dump is, a step-by-step way to do one, how to sort the list afterwards, and why writing things down helps you think and sleep.
A brain dump is exactly what it sounds like: you write down everything that's in your head, as fast as it comes, without sorting or judging it. Tasks, worries, ideas, half-remembered errands, the thing you said yesterday. All of it goes on the page.
It's one of the simplest tools there is, and one of the most useful when your mind feels like a browser with forty tabs open.
Why a brain dump helps
Your working memory, the part of your mind that holds what you're thinking about right now, has a small capacity. Every unfinished task and every open worry takes up a little of it. Writing them down moves them somewhere safe, which frees up room to think.
There's research behind this:
- Students who did a few short sessions of writing about their thoughts and feelings had bigger gains in working memory seven weeks later than students who wrote about trivial topics, along with fewer intrusive thoughts (Klein and Boals, 2001).
- Students who wrote about their worries for ten minutes just before an important exam scored higher than those who didn't, especially if they usually got anxious about tests (Ramirez and Beilock, 2011).
- People who spent five minutes writing a specific to-do list at bedtime fell asleep faster than people who wrote about what they had already done (Scullin and colleagues, 2018).
How to do a brain dump in 10 minutes
1. Get everything out (5 minutes)
Set a timer for five minutes. Write down everything on your mind as a list, one item per line. Don't organise, don't explain, don't stop to fix spelling. If you get stuck, go through these areas in your head:
- work or school
- home and errands
- money
- people: anyone you need to reply to, call or apologise to
- health and body
- worries and what-ifs
- ideas and things you'd like to do
Keep going until the timer rings, even if the last items are small. Small things take up space too.
2. Sort the list (5 minutes)
Now go through the list and mark each line with one letter:
- D for Do. Things you can do soon. Add a day next to them.
- P for Plan. Bigger things that need a first step. Write that step.
- W for Worry. Things you can't act on right now. These go to worry time or get a not mine to solve today.
- I for Idea. Things to keep, but not act on yet. Move them to a separate page.
- X for Drop. Things that don't need to happen at all. Cross them out with pleasure.
Here's a small example:
Reply to Ana about Saturday D, today
Car insurance renewal D, Thursday
I think the meeting went badly W
Plan mum's birthday P, ask Tom about dates
Learn to make bread I
Reorganise the whole wardrobe X
That's it. The list that was spinning in your head is now on a page with an answer next to every line.
When to do a brain dump
In the evening. A brain dump a couple of hours before bed, plus a short to-do list for tomorrow, is one of the best ways to stop racing thoughts at night.
First thing in the morning. If you wake up with a busy head, a quick dump before you check your phone helps you choose what actually matters today.
Before something stressful. An exam, an interview, a hard conversation. Writing the worries down first can make them quieter.
When you're overwhelmed. When everything feels urgent, writing it all down usually shows that only two or three things really are.
Brain dumps and ADHD
Brain dumps are often recommended for people with ADHD, because holding many things in mind at once is often hard work. Getting tasks out of your head and onto paper means you don't have to keep them all in working memory. If that's you, keep the brain dump list in the same place every time, and keep the sorting step short. A brain dump isn't a treatment for ADHD, but it can be a helpful everyday tool alongside one.
Prompts to get a brain dump started
- What am I trying not to forget?
- What's unfinished?
- What am I waiting on from someone else?
- What's bugging me that I haven't told anyone?
- What would I do this week if I had a free afternoon?
- What do I keep meaning to do?
If you'd like prompts for calmer days too, see our list of journaling ideas. If you're new to writing things down regularly, how to start journaling keeps it to five minutes a day.
Brain dump, journal or to-do list?
- A to-do list is for tasks you've already decided to do.
- A journal is for reflecting: what happened, how you feel, what you learned.
- A brain dump comes before both. It catches everything, so you can then decide what becomes a task, what becomes a journal entry, and what can go.
The same idea, in the game
In Leaf by Leaf, the notebook has a simple task list next to the pages: write small things down, tick them off, and earn a little XP for each one. When a single worry is too big for a list, Untangle a thought walks you through it in seven pages, and at the end the tree lets the leaf go.
You can try it on the home page without buying anything. Nothing you write there is saved or sent.