№ 02Getting started

The two-minute brain dump

· 1 min

If your head is full right now, this takes two minutes and needs no setup.

Open a blank note. Any app. Set a timer if it helps.

Write down everything you are carrying. Not tasks. Everything. The thing you are dreading. The thing you keep forgetting. The vague one you cannot name properly yet, which you can just write as "the work thing".

Rules, such as they are:

  1. No order.
  2. No editing.
  3. Do not stop to finish a thought. Half a thought counts.

When the timer goes, stop. Look at it.

in your head

A single run-on vent filling the board in blue marker, one word crossed out and corrected in flight, one date ringed in red, stopping mid-sentence when the timer went.

on the page

  1. Call the dentist
  2. Email Marcus back
  3. Renew the insurance
  4. Check Mom's birthday
  5. Draft the Q3 deck
  6. Book the car service
One unbroken vent, stopped mid-sentence, becomes six things you can actually do.

What usually happens

For me, two things. The list is shorter than it felt, which is a strange relief. And two or three items turn out to be the same item wearing different clothes.

Neither of those is visible while it is all still in your head. That is the point. Writing it down does not solve anything by itself. A head is just a bad place to hold a list, and it charges you rent the whole time.

Then what

Nothing, if you like. Some days the dump is the whole thing and you close the note and go to bed.

If you want to go further, that raw text is exactly what Brain Dump takes. You paste the mess in and get back tasks, goals, and routines you can work from. But the two-minute version works on its own, in any app you already have.

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