To Brain Dump all you need to do is get out a full page of paper and then sit down and write down everything you need to get done.
It is recommended writing down everything you were thinking about, not just task related thoughts.
This should take a while – even hours if you have a lot on your mind. Once it is done you should feel a lot better as you no longer need to use your brain to keep track of all these things. You can let the paper have the responsibility. This part is very relieving and well worth the effort.
With the content from your brain “dumped” on to paper, the next job is to organize your data. Focus on finding the 10 things you need to get done immediately and to focus on results. Place a tick next to the things out of your control so you could just forget about them and let them go.
You should categorize and prioritize tasks. You can write everything down in one big dump session. You can then go through and group tasks into categories like “Business” and “Home” and “Socializing”. From there you can also rank them in importance from the most important to the least. Then, when it’s time to get to work you just go through the tasks one by one and best of all, you get to write a big line through each task as you complete them (another very satisfying activity).
Anyone who is a control freak trying to manage everything inside their brain will appreciate this.
I suggest you take some time out of your day to try the brain dump technique and see what impact it has on you. Remember it’s important to let go of things once they are dumped and then rely on the paper, not your brain for tracking things.
Make sure you write down every little thing that comes to mind, from “buy milk” to “write blog post on topic X”.