THE BIG BRAIN DUMP

THE Big

Brain Dump

By Liz Fleming

Webster’s Dictionary defines brain dumping as “the act or an instance of comprehensively and

uncritically expressing and recording one's thoughts and ideas.”

The most important word in that definition is "uncritically." When you do a brain dump, you pop open your mind and simply let every thought, worry, concern, idea and emotion slide out without examination or editing. Brain dumping is a first cousin to brain storming but the important difference is that you do it all on your own. There’s no collaboration involved and your thoughts are all yours.

What’s the point? Like creating clean space by finally sorting out all the junk you’ve been hoarding in your basement, a brain dump empties your mind of the bits and pieces that swirl

endlessly, just beyond your conscious thoughts, causing you to feel distracted, disorganized

and frustrated. Imagine the relief you’ll feel when you clear that mental clutter.

0.1 Get Started

The good news is, you won’t need an appointment with a therapist to get this clean-out party started. In fact, you won’t need anything other than a means of recording the results of your big dump. You can use your phone, your laptop or even just a notebook and a pen – it’s up to you. Start by setting up a loose system for recording your thoughts using categories like "money", "family", "work", "future" etc. Then begin listing your thoughts – in point form. No one else is going to read this, so there’s no need to pretend you’re Shakespeare. Some people like to sit down somewhere without distractions and let everything flow out at once. Others prefer to carry their notebook or phone with them to capture thoughts as they occur. Do whatever works best for you.

0.2 Go A Little Deeper

As you’re listing the thoughts that fall into your first basic categories, you’re likely to become aware of issues that evoke more emotion that others. Maybe you’ll want to add "frustrations" or "challenges", or, on the other hand, "joys", "achievements" and "ambitions" to your list of categories. Write it all down – everything is important.

0.3 Don't edit!

This first phase is all about keeping the flow gushing freely so resist the temptation to edit anything you’re writing. As we’ve noted, the results of this brain dump are for your eyes only, so there’s no need to hold back or phrase things delicately. Just let it all out and capture every thought as it occurs to you.

0.4 Spit out that cud

Simply recording your thoughts frees you from having to hold them in your mind – a process that’s called "ruminating." Here’s an interesting bit of word play – to ruminate is to “carefully think something over, ponder it or meditate on it. It can also mean to chew over and over again, as ruminant animals, like cows, do. In psychology, the term means to obsessively repeat thoughts or excessively think about problems.” Imagine a cow, standing in a field, chewing and rechewing her cud. That’s what our minds do when we chew away at the same thoughts, day in and day out. Unlike the cow, however, who’s stuck with that same cud, we have the power to spit those thoughts out and chew on something fresh!

0.5 Next steps

Dumping and collecting your thoughts is a great start, and sorting through is even more helpful.

0.6 Junk and more junk

When you write down the thoughts that have been cluttering your mind for weeks and months, you’ll be surprised by how trivial they seem.

“Front hedge needs trimming,” and “Where is my damned Phillips screwdriver?” Small, but annoying thoughts, particularly when they occur to you half a dozen times a day.

0.7 Change the things you can right now

Pick off the low-hanging fruit first. Trim that hedge or hire someone else to do it. Root around in the garage until you find the elusive screwdriver or treat yourself to a new one. Solving a few of the issues unearthed in your brain dump will generate more satisfaction than you can imagine.

0.8 Now what?

Recognize that you aren’t going to solve all the issues you’ve dumped into your journal at once. Nor are you going to solve them all in the next day, or week or year. What you are going to do is give your mind a break from feeling that it has to ruminate on those issues in order to keep them from being forgotten. You’ve captured everything on paper or digitally, so you can be confident that nothing will slip away.

0.9 Browse a bit

Every day or so, take a quick look at your brain dump notes to see if there’s anything you have a new handle on. That document should remain a work in progress, so add new thoughts as they come to you.

0.10 Adjust Your Focus

Once you’ve fixed the small things, re-evaluated the larger ones and made some plans for tackling the biggest challenges, turn the focus around and concentrate on everything that fell into the “joy” or “achievements” categories. Take time to be grateful for what makes you happy – like your family and friends, your good health and the career you enjoy. Be proud of your achievements. You’re working hard, doing a great job, and you have colleagues who value you. You might even be in line for a promotion one of these days. Those are all thoughts that deserve attention but are all too often lost in the shuffle of day-to-day worries. Pull them out of the brain dump pile, shine them up and be happy!

Brain dump?!

I NEVER WRITE THINGS DOWN…

You don’t need to dive right into the serious stuff if that’s making you feel a bit overwhelmed. Instead, try a few of these easy topics to get you started on your own brain dump.