A brain dump is when you get every thought rattling around your head onto one page, fast, without sorting it as you go. Our free brain dump template has two pages, one to capture everything and one to sort it, because the dumping is the easy bit. It’s what you do with the list afterwards that stops it becoming a very long, very anxious piece of paper you never look at again.
What a brain dump is
Picture your head as a desk with 47 browser tabs open on it. Some of those tabs matter. One is a recipe from 2019. One is playing music and you cannot for the life of you find which.
Sometimes the thought isn’t overwhelming. Keeping it alive because you’re scared you’ll lose it is.
A brain dump closes the tabs by writing them down. Not organising, not prioritising, not colour-coding (yet, we see you). Just getting it out.
Here’s the bit nobody says: a brain dump is a lost property box, not a to-do list. Everything goes in. Nothing gets done straight out of the box. Most people skip the sorting, which is how a brain dump turns into the world’s longest guilt receipt.
How to do a brain dump in 10 minutes
- Set a timer for 10 minutes. Not “until I’m done”. You will never be done. Your brain is a content farm.
- Write fragments, not sentences. “Call dentist”, not “I really need to remember to call the dentist about the thing”. If it fits on a sticky note, it fits here.
- Don’t sort, don’t judge. “Email Sarah” can sit right next to “what if I learnt the cello”. Both are welcome. Neither is happening in the next 10 minutes.
- When you stall, do a lap. Work, home, people, money, body, that thing you keep meaning to do. Something always shakes loose.
- When the timer goes, stop. Even mid-thought. It’ll still be there. It always is.
What to put on the page
Everything. But to make sorting quicker, give each thought a tiny tag, either as you go or straight after if tagging mid-flow slows you down. We use eight:
- Idea: a “wouldn’t it be cool if”
- Todo: something with an actual action attached
- Question: something you need to find out or ask
- Worry: the 3am stuff
- Note: info worth keeping that doesn’t need doing
- Goal: a bigger thing you’re working towards
- Reminder: anything tied to a date or time
- Creative: project-brain stuff that deserves its own space
The sneaky hero here is worry. Tagging something as a worry stops it pretending to be a task. You can’t tick off “what if the client hates it”. You can tick off “send the client the draft by Thursday”.
What to do with the list afterwards
Your brain doesn’t need to hold onto everything. It needs to trust that wherever you put it, you’ll be able to find it again.
This is where a brain dump template earns its keep. On the Sort page, every thought gets three things:
- A home. Each tag gets its own list. Todos go with todos, ideas go with ideas, worries go somewhere you can look at them in daylight. That way your ideas stop nagging you like chores.
- A one-line next step. “Call dentist” becomes “Call dentist Monday 9am, number’s in my emails”. If you can’t write a next step, it probably isn’t a todo. It’s an idea or a worry wearing a todo costume.
- A status. New, sorted or done. Three options. Nobody needs a seven-stage pipeline for “buy bin bags”.
And yes, “delete” is a valid next step. Some thoughts just needed to be said out loud so they’d stop following you around the house.
A filled-in example
Here’s a real-ish Tuesday morning dump, tagged and sorted:
| Thought | Tag | Next step |
|---|---|---|
| Invoice the Hendersons | todo | Send before lunch today |
| Start a podcast?? | idea | Ideas list. No next step needed yet |
| Do I need to register for GST? | question | Ask the accountant in Friday’s email |
| Did I sound weird in that meeting | worry | Parked. Reread the notes Thursday if it’s still bugging me |
| Mum’s birthday is the 14th | reminder | In the calendar, card posted by the 10th |
| Studio wifi password is on the router | note | Notes list |
| Moodboard for the new mug range | creative | 30 minutes tomorrow morning |
| Run a 5k by March | goal | Goals list, pick a first step on Sunday |
Eight thoughts, about four minutes of sorting. Two are actual jobs for today. The other six have a home and have stopped yelling.
Get the free brain dump template
The free template is two pages, one Capture and one Sort, and you can fill it in on screen or print it if you’re a pen person. If you want the whole thing set up for you, with a list for each tag and status tracking built in, that’s the Brain Dump & Capture System, in PDF or Notion.
