Having too much on your mind causes chaos. The chaos is not easy to sort through when the brain is a hedge maze full of information and ideas. A way to remedy this chaotic mind is to do a brain dump and lighten or even relieve the mental load of motherhood and mom brain! This post is part of our 31 days of tips for Working Moms to find Calm in the Chaos of Life series.
Why do a Brain Dump?
We all have a lot on our minds and having a full plate is part of parenthood. But how do we GTD? (That stands for Getting Things Done, by the way.) I find a great place to start is doing a download of everything on our minds onto paper. Get started with a mental load checklist and brain dump.
How do you know if you need to do a brain dump? Well, let’s see:
- Does your mind constantly jump back and forth between things you need to do?
- Are you always wondering if there is something you should be doing?
- Do you often have trouble sleeping because of all the ideas floating around your head?
Our minds are not meant to manage this much information. Information overload is a real thing, moms! That’s why the journal and planner markets are HUGE!
Getting it all out of your head and onto paper helps. SO MUCH!
Once you give these ideas and lingering thoughts the recognition they are demanding, your mind can relax and move on to other things.
How to do a Brain Dump
A great place to start is my Mind Dump Journal and Brain Dump Planner! It is full of lovely pages for a brain dump worksheet and mind dump brain dump journal pages. Get your brain dump journal printable here:
I hope you love this brain dump printable for your mental load checklist!
You can also start with a spiral notebook. You might want to use my lovely notebook journal I have in my Zazzle store. Call this brain dump planner your working mom to do list.
You can even do this as part of your bullet journal at work.
Sit down with a pen and your brain dump journal and just start writing. Don’t worry about being organized or systematic. Just write. One thought per line. We’ll organize them later. Here are some topics to consider when doing a brain dump:
- Deadlines and reminders.
- Plans for house projects?
- Projects at work with tasks that keep tripping you up? write them down!
- Heavy emotions and negative self-talk? write that ish down and
cross it out! - Health concerns or appointments to make.
- Birthdays? Christmas gifts? Anniversary?
- Family meetings or topics to discuss with your spouse?
- Things to buy/cook/think about later.
- Gratitude and positive thoughts
- Priorities and goals
You get the point. Everything and anything that’s on your mind absolutely needs to be brain-dumped.
What’s next after a Brain Dump?
Now that you have everything down on paper, grab your highlighters!
Make notes of what you can control, and what is out of your control. Those thoughts that you cannot control the outcome – just set those aside. Let them be removed from your head and you no longer have to dwell on or take action on them.
You want to categorize everything that you do have control over in groups that make sense.
Examples of these categories can be:
- Work
- Home
- School
- Kids
- Child care
- Health
- Marriage/Partnership
- Family
You get the idea. Give a category to everything and highlight to visually showcase these categories. Then you can return to this list later and pull each item to its own page in your brain dump journal if you wish to organize the ideas and thoughts further.
We’ll talk about how to prioritize your to-do list later, but there are a few things you can do to get a head start on figuring out what to do with everything on your list.
Look through each item and assign a general time frame of how long you expect the task to take, and a timeline for when it needs to be completed (if at all). Maybe you have a home task that would take a full weekend to complete but it’s a nice-to-have and not super urgent. Make a note of that.
Is there something that would take less than 5 minutes to do, but has to be done during business hours? Make that note, and add it to your to-do list for the next day (aka your daily schedule). If it would take less than 5 minutes and can be done at any time, just do it now. Cross it off and feel better.
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When to do a Brain Dump?
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and seeking the calm in the chaos, do a brain dump right away!
Then set up a routine. Maybe do one at the beginning of a new month (or at the end of the month planning for the month ahead).
Some people like to do them on Sunday to plan for the week ahead (keeps the Sunday scaries at bay). Others keep their brain dump template notebook on their nightstand for any lingering thoughts that keep them up at night.
You can even do a brain dump first thing in the morning. Find a rhythm that works for you!
How often do you do a brain dump, or are you planning to start?
This post is part of the 31 Tips for Working Moms series. See the rest of the posts here:
Grab your Master Agenda now!
Join the tribe email list and we will send you this Master Agenda Workbook right away!
Tisha says
I need to start doing these just to get things off my mind
Monica Simpson says
When I answered yes to all three of those questions in the beginning I knew this post was for me. I like the idea of getting into a routine at the end of the month, doing a brain dump, to help prepare for the next month.
charlie says
This really helped reduce my anxiety – and so simple! Thank you for sharing!
Jen @ JENRON DESIGNS says
I think more people need brain dumps these days as they are operating beyond capacity from the working at home during the pandemic days. The lines have been blurred and no one is getting any kind of break from work now, but even if they wanted one they can’t for job security in this unstable workforce.
Amber Myers says
I need to do this, big time. My brain could use a dump. It’s pretty full.
Shari says
Such great ideas. I think most of us moms are constantly overwhelmed. I’m old school and still use spiral notebooks to write myself a weekly to-do list!
Julie says
Spiral notebooks are great! I do a combination of written by hand and google calendar/electronic notes.