Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
The Brain Dump
The Perfect Daughter can tell a lot about her clients by the lists they keep. Often, when I meet new clients for the first time, we will walk through their home as they tell what the issues are, what they hope to accomplish, and what they need to do. I realize that it is a long list, and I ask, “Do you have this all written down somewhere?” Sometimes the answer is “Yes, but in 15 places”, but often the answer is “No, not really.”
One thing I know about myself as well as most of my clients is that our brains are going a million miles a minute. We are constantly thinking about all of the stuff we need, want and ought to do. Our brains rattle off in ten different directions at once and these scattering thoughts become wasted energy. The trick is to harness that roaming herd, and it is pretty easy to do.
The best trap is a list I call the brain dump, which is exactly what it sounds like: A list upon which everything is listed on it. You just have to get it all out. Don’t worry about form or neatness; don’t sort, don’t categorize, just get all those annoying things to do outof your brain and onto a page. Some people like to type on a computer, which is logical, but I find what works best is to scribble it all down as fast as possible on a yellow legal pad.
The point of the brain dump is to stop all that pinging in your head and turn it into single action items to create a plan for handling each task. Often, I will write it all down and then rewrite it in an organized fashion, putting phone calls with phone calls and errands with errands. It sounds like an extra effort, but a little smart planning has you checking things off the list at a much faster rate.
A lot of times people will have a big overwhelming project, such as sell mother’s antique cookbook collection. On the brain dump list, you can write “Sell book collection” but in the rewrite you are going to narrow it to “Call book dealer.” It is like a math exercise where you are trying to get down to the prime number. You must find the essential task!
Frequently, our busy lives seem out of control, and seeing it all down on paper makes it more manageable. You can break it into smaller pieces and prioritize, separating the tasks with a deadline (pay bills) from the stuff that you want to do (paint closet) that is not essential. Once you have dumped what was so overwhelming in your head to a list on a single page and sorted into tasks, many of which are only going to take ten minutes, you realize that tackling one task at a time, you will get it done.
If you are not much of a list maker, I strongly encourageyou to try it just once and see if it doesn’t clear your mind and take a few things off the table. The funny thing is that by dumping the brain, you will actually get to use more of your brain in an active sense versus a storage shed capacity. And, maybe, just maybe, it will make room for you to truly savor the last of the summer sunsets.