How To Clear Your Mind With A Brain Dump Exercise
This blog post has been adapted from the transcription of the above video.
Have you ever woken up in the morning and felt like you have so many things to do? All the tasks you have to juggle end up becoming really challenging and jumbled up in your mind. Often, what happens is that we have a long laundry list of things that need to get done and require our attention. I want to share with you one method that helps me clear my thoughts. I call it a "brain dump" which is quite simple. All you need is a notebook, pen, and oh, your brain.
A brain dump consists of you writing all your tasks and picking the top 20% that would make the greatest impact on your day.
How To Do A “Brain Dump”
First step is to grab your notebook and write down every single thing that's on your mind. Do this uninterruptedly for three to five minutes. Some things on your list may include walking the dog, paying your taxes, going to the bank to do errands, etc.
Once you have that list written down, you're going to circle the items that you can directly control and influence. For example, if you wrote down on your list that you’re worried because the weather forecast said it was going to rain today, don’t circle that.
Next thing you’re going to do is count the number of items that are circled. There's a concept called the "80/20 principle" where 20% of our actions will create 80% of those results. So let's say now you've circled 10 items. Pick just the top 20%, which will be 2 in this case, of the tasks which will make the greatest impact.
Once you know what those two items are, take action on just those two. Ignore all of the other ones. And once you’ve completed those 2 tasks, you can then move on to the next ones.
There is power in prioritizing and realizing that there are things you can control and things you can’t.
You Are Overwhelmed Because You Are Not Prioritizing
As you can see, a brain dump is a great way to clear the mind. But what’s really powerful is the step after writing down all the things you need to do. The power is in the “80/20” and in identifying what you actually have control over. You are being forced to really think about all the things you wrote down and prioritize them.
That sense of dread or overwhelm and stress you get from all these things you need to do isn’t just from the absolute number of the tasks. But rather, it’s from not prioritizing them! The reality is that you are always going to need to do things and there will always be more things to add to your never-ending list.
Peace comes from acknowledging what you have control over and identifying these important items so you can take each on one at a time.
When you learn to prioritize your tasks, you become less overwhelmed and are able to start your day with a clearer, more relaxed mind.
You Have More Control Than You Think
When you feel like all these tasks are pulling you left and right, begging for your attention, you’ll know it’s time to get out your notebook and pen. Once you’ve listed down everything you need to do, you might find that some aren’t really as urgent as you thought.
When you learn how to prioritize, you’ll be able to apply this practice into other aspects of your life, and maybe things won’t seem as scary and stressful anymore.
There are days when you wake up and your long to-do list makes you anxious and overwhelmed. On days like this, there’s a simple but powerful exercise you can do to help you start prioritizing and take control of your day. In this blog, we talk about this practice called a brain dump.