Brain Dump - Declogging a Cluttered Mind

Why don't we achieve as much as we want to, and are capable of, inspite of all the (mythical) multitasking that we do ? 

                 ........ FOCUS happens to be the single most important factor responsible for our inability to achieve to our potential  !

Now, let me ask whether you have any idea about the human attention span ?

Well, at present it stands at about 8 seconds and is bound to decrease further if the consumption of technology keeps increasing at this pace. In fact, a goldfish has a better attention span than humans.

So, in the midst of all this technology permeation and information overload, where do we,humans, stand ?  For humans, it's not really easy to survive this onslaught of information overdose and is bound to impact them adversely. We, humans, are already subject to many unconscious bias that lead to irrational thinking and decision-making (Related Article: Cognitive Biases - Braving The Brain Barriers)  and this information overload just adds to the existing problem. There is a direct impact our mental health and productivity.

Research says that we,humans, get about 50,000 thoughts per day and about 70% of these are negative and about 90% of these are repetitive. These thoughts could be anything ranging from fear, worries, ideas, chores, goals, aspirations, and so on. Our brain is definitely going to get clogged with so many thoughts and cloud our thinking and action.

Another fact about brain states that our body sends about 11 million bit of information per second for processing to the brain but the brain only processes about 40-50 bits of information per second in a conscious way.

Amidst the potential of human brain, the biggest challenge that gets posed to humans is how to derive sense from this barrage of thoughts and bring some meaning to our life, in terms of achieving our goals and accomplishing our dreams. This asks for a solution that could help us lay out the chaos happening in our brain (the thoughts) in front of us and then identify which one we need to focus on.

Let me share with you about an extremely simple tool/ technique that could help us turn this commotion into clarity. This tool is "Brain Dump". Lets dig deep and understand more about this tool

Definition and Background of Brain Dump

Brain Dump is a tool/ technique that helps us put down all our thoughts (random and specific) outside our brain (head used interchangeably) onto some other storage media, which can be physical or

digital. Another simple definition could be to perceive brain dump as transfer of knowledge/ information from our brain to some storage media. Even literally, the term "brain dump" refers to copying the (contents of ) brain to a different location, to protect against loss.

The term "brain dump" was popularised by David Allen , the Productivity Guru, in his book Getting Things Done

Need for Brain Dump

There's so much worth to all that we contain in our brain. The thoughts in our brain could very well be some unique idea, our aspirations, ambitions, goals, solutions to a difficult problem (talking only about the positive thoughts). For lack of an opportunity to pay attention to them and focus on them, we lose out on bringing them to fruition and/ or actualising them . "Brain Dump" is that opportunity to make things happen. Most importantly, brain dump helps us overcome the feeling of overwhelmingness and puts us in a state of better control of things pertaining to our life. Simply put, our thoughts create our destiny and if the brain is cluttered with too many thoughts, it only blocks us from realising our goals.

Leaving the thoughts unaddressed could put us under tremendous mental stress and may lead to frustration, anxiety, mood swings, depression and many similar issues.

There are tremendous benefits of brain dump. Some of the key ones include 

• Clarity about next steps
• In better Control of things
• Results is Peace of Mind and makes more Calm and Relaxed
• Makes us more Organised 
• Allows us to be Creative in trying out new ideas and generating better solutions 
• Manage Time Better 
• Be more Relaxed and Stress Free   
• Become more Focused to pay attention to the relevant
• Get more Productive 
• Helps in Decluttering and filtering out the irrelevant
• Helps in Planning better 

Food for Thought - Remember, the writer's block syndrome ? Brain Dump could definitely be a means to help us step out of the block when the mind is struggling to put structure to words. 

How to do Brain Dump

Firstly, how do we identify that we need a brain dump ? Well, when the mind feels heavy and thinking appears cloudy is an indication that we need a brain dump to move it our of our head and lay it in front of us. 

Doing brain dump is quite easy and can be done in the following way 

• Grab a pen and paper or open the note taking or word processing digital app or tool.  
• Sit undisturbed for 20-30 min (we may alter the time based on our need - it could be less or more than the specified time). In case we decide to do it longer, we can take a short 5 min break in between
• Write down everything that comes to the mind. It could be thoughts, feelings, errands, reminders, goals,dreams, fears, doubts, problems, solutions, aspirations, to-do, projects, etc. 
• And there, we have the brain dump nicely laid in front of us
• Now, we may use this dump for categorising the items, prioritising them for action (this step is not part of the brain dump process but an extension of it )

Features of Brain Dump

• It needs minimal structure
• It's free flowing in nature 
• It does not expect us to be perfect in what we write
• We may do the brain dump on a plain sheet or paper, or on some journal or any piece of stationery of our choice. Few of the types that you could buy are  Amazon Classic Notebook , Factor Notes Dotted Bullet , Doodle Adventure of the Mind Notebook
• It's an anytime, anywhere activity and all it needs is some dedicated time.
• Based on the need, it can be done at any time 
• Based on the need, it can be done as many times  
• It's personal in nature 
• Initially, Brain Dump could be done an a demand/ ad-hoc basis but later it could be built within our daily routine, maybe twice a day - 1. before going to sleep, and 2. after waking up, as first thing in the morning.

Precautions during Brain Dump

• Start brain dump simple and easy
• Don't think too much during the activity. Simply, let the thoughts flow
• Just write and write whatever comes to the mind
• Don't be judgemental about what we write
• Don't do it as a family, team or group activity. Remember, our thoughts are our own.
• Don't bother if what you have written doesn't make sense. Eventually, it will  :)
• Don't jump to categorising items before putting in down on some storage (paper sheet or digital tool)
• You may use black or coloured pen/ pencils for brain dump but ensure that whatever we dump is legible

There are plenty of templates for brain dump available on the internet. Here's link to one of the simplest Brain Dump Template. Some of the digital tools we can use for brain dump are Google Docs, Evernote and any tool with a voice memo feature.

You may find more interesting Brain Dump journals here Brain Dump Journal

N.B. - The images used in this post/ article have been sourced from the internet. 

The post also contains some affiliate links and i may earn some commission for my endorsement, testimonial, and/ or link to any product or service from this post  

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