Overheard a barista talking about her "brain dump" method and it clicked for me

I was waiting for my coffee last Tuesday and this barista was telling her coworker how she uses a brain dump every night to clear her head before bed. She said she just writes down everything floating around in there, no structure, no bullets, just pure word vomit. I went home and tried it that night and holy crap, I slept better than I have in weeks. The next morning I took that mess and turned it into actual tasks in my journal. It took maybe 10 minutes total but it saved me from that feeling of forgetting something important. Has anyone else tried this kind of unfiltered writing before organizing your spreads?

3 comments

3 Comments

logan_young293d ago

That barista’s onto something real though. So when you did your brain dump, did you find you were dumping mostly work stuff or was it random life junk like remembering to feed the neighbor’s cat or that weird thing your mom said three years ago? Mine started out as 70% random anxious garbage, but after a week it got more focused. Curious if your journaling after the dump felt more like copying things down or actually breaking them into steps you could do the next day. Like, do you highlight or star the urgent ones or just let them sit until morning?

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lindal133d ago

@logan_young29, oh man, that hit home. My first brain dump was probably 80% random junk like your example, including a weird thought about a book my third grade teacher recommended that I never read. It was a mess. But after a few days, my brain figured out it could dump the real urgent stuff, and the noise faded. As for journaling after, I don't star or highlight. I just write it all down, then before bed I pick the top two or three things that absolutely have to get done tomorrow and think about the first step for each. The rest just sits there until morning, but that alone stops my head from spinning at 3 AM.

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pat_fisher242d ago

@logan_young29, that barista definitely stumbled onto something good. My first brain dump was a mess of cat food reminders and a grudge against my neighbor for borrowing my ladder and not returning it. I didn't think about work at all that first week. The noise faded after maybe three days, and now it's mostly stuff I actually need to handle. I don't star or highlight anything either. I just pick two things before bed and think about the first step for each. The rest sits there, and that stops my brain from spinning at 3 AM just like lindal13 said.