What it is
A brain dump is the act of writing down everything currently rattling around in your head, fast, without organising or judging. You then look at the pile and decide what's actually a thing.
ADHD working memory is unreliable in a very specific way: it doesn't lose information, it holds too much at once and then drops everything in a panic. The brain dump moves that holding job onto paper, which never panics.
When to use it
- You can't sleep because your brain keeps rehearsing tomorrow
- You feel busy but can't say what you're busy with
- You're switching between five tasks and finishing none
- Sunday night, before a week that already feels like too much
- The moment you notice a tab-overload sensation behind your eyes
How to do it
- Paper, not screens. A blank A4 sheet is best. Screens invite organising and tagging. The whole point is to not organise yet.
- Set a timer for ten minutes. Brain dumps without a timer expand to fill the day.
- Write everything. Tasks, worries, half-thoughts, song lyrics, that thing your aunt said. No order, no categories.
- Don't edit while writing. You're emptying, not curating.
- When the timer ends, look at the page and circle the three things that are actually next actions. Everything else can wait. Most of it can wait forever.
An example
I lay in bed for forty minutes one Tuesday, unable to sleep, brain looping through a tax form, a friend's text, a bug at work, and a vague sense I had forgotten something.
I got up, grabbed paper, wrote for nine minutes. The page had 31 items. Three of them mattered:
- Reply to Sam (2 min)
- Find out the tax form deadline (probably fine, just need to check)
- Email Pedro about the bug
I went back to bed at 11:30pm. Asleep by 11:35pm. The brain hadn't been holding 31 things; it had been holding "an undefined number of things" which is much worse.
When this fails
- You organise as you write. The whole point is the absence of structure. Bullet points are fine; categories are not.
- You do it digitally and then keep tweaking it. Phones lie to you about which note-taking app is the right one. Paper is faster than Notion every time for this.
- You never review the pile. A brain dump that doesn't end with "OK what are the three real things?" is just a list. The triage step is where the relief comes from.
Try it this week
Tonight, before bed, set a ten-minute timer. Write everything in your head onto a single page. Circle three real next actions. Put the page somewhere you'll see it in the morning.
Notice whether you sleep differently.