Do you have a million things on your mind? Is your to do list a mile long? Stop stressing and brain dump today. 

Feeling like I have a million things on the go, combined with a full calendar of commitments, inevitably raises my stress levels and increase my anxiety. This often has the flow on effect of impacting on my sleep (I tend to wake through the night remembering things I forgot to do), which increases my caffeine intake, which increase my anxiety and things start spiraling out of control from there. Eventually I hit the point where enough is enough.

One of my go to strategies is the brain dump. My process doesn’t have the finesse of  Tony Robbins’ capturing, or the visual beauty of Tony Buzan’s mind mapping, but it works for me. Call it what you like, brain dumping – getting everything out of your head and onto a page – is an awesome stress reliever.

Prioritise time

Firstly I close my door and I prioritise at least an hour maybe more towards the process. Don’t feel guilty or time pressured to get the job done quicker. Done well, this process will not only save you time, but your sanity as well.

Get organised

Next I spend some time organising myself and thinking about what I want to achieve. Usually I have a million post it notes stuck to my diary pages, as well as hastily scrawled to do lists and task reminders and emails to action.  The state of disarray of my workspace seems to exponentially increase the busier I am.

Let the brain dump begin!

Begin to make a list of everything that is in your head and needs to be done. Even if it is a fair way into the future. I tend to be an ideas generator (sometimes to the detriment of being an ideas completer), but I list down all of my ideas, dreams, schemes and worries, none the less.

Set a timer for 10 minutes. You’ll be surprised just how much time this is. Go through your current to do list and calendar and add these to your master list. Turn back through your diary to check that nothing important has been missed that you were meant to do.

Take some time to scroll through your inbox, but don’t read any in detail. Just make a note of those that need to be actioned and then, depending on your calendaring process, drag them into a separate folder or into your calendar an an event. You could even print them off if that’s how you prefer to operate.

Keep going until you have exhausted all of your information sources and your 10 minute timer goes off.

I want you to keep going for the full amount of time. If you get through all of the urgent ‘stuff’ (probably work stuff I’m thinking) that is bugging you, think of some of the other ‘stuff’ (home stuff?) that you probably should have done that you ran out of time to get done and which are still hanging over your head.

Take control

There are many different business theories as to how to sort your list from here. I like to keep it simple and divide my tasks into four categories: URGENT, TO DO, STRATEGIC and IDEAS. I still use paper and pen for this part of the process, despite operating very digitally.

I divide my page in half and at the top of the first column write down all of the tasks that are URGENT and need to be completed this week. Put the urgent stuff for today a the top of this list. It is a good idea to then ‘schedule’ these tasks into your calendar and allocate reasonable amounts of time to each in order to get the job done. Try not to get overwhelmed by how much is there.

About two thirds of the way down this column I have a heading called STRATEGIC. Here I put down all of the compliance documents and strategic plans that I need to keep on my radar but that may not be due for a while, such as BAS reporting, facilities planning, annual budget etc.

At the top of the second column I begin listing everything else that I have TO DO, but that isn’t urgent yet. Again I roughly sort this into a time sequence with those things that need to be done sooner, higher on the list.

But what about my ideas?

If you are wondering where I record my IDEAS, I put these on a large brightly coloured post it note (to distinguish it from my regular on the run to do tasks on post its). The benefit of using a post it note is that I can then transfer this list to my notes each week and not have to re-write them out over and over again – they are just ideas after all, and these can sometimes become busy work if you let them.

Maintain

The trick is to now try to stay on top of this new list and review at least weekly and make adjustments as needed.

I hope you found this brain dump process helpful. You might also like to try different planning tools. 

If you would like more ideas on how to bridge the digital divide, follow me on Facebook or Twitter.