If you are already into bullet journaling or have just started to write your journal, you know how much time you save by planning and staying organized. It frees your mind from many things! Almost everyone who uses this system uses it as a tool to track their daily, weekly, or monthly tasks. But what do you do when you think of a task that doesn’t have a defined date? Where do you note it? Future log? But in which month?
Overcoming mental exhaustion
It was David Allen’s book, “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” that gave me the idea. The following explanation caught my attention:
The short-term memory of the brain can be compared to the RAM of a computer. As for the consciousness, we can compare it to a monitor: it is a focusing tool and not a storage space. You can only focus on one or two things at a time. Everything that is pending remains stored in the short-term memory. However, like RAM, short-term memory has only limited capacity. You can only store a certain amount of pending tasks there without impeding its operation. Most people live with a short-term memory that is bursting at the seams. And that’s precisely why they are constantly distracted.
So, what do you think? Do you also sometimes get a feeling of having a little too much in your head?
While snooping on the Internet, I quickly realized that I was not the first to have had this idea of brain dump in the bullet journal! The opposite would have been surprising. But I will explain you how I create a brain dump in my BuJo.
What is a brain dump?
A brain dump or mind dump is a page where you can list or pour out all the little things, ideas or thoughts you might want to do or that must be done one day but with no urgency. It allows you to completely empty your brain! You might ask me that if there’s no rush, what’s the point of writing it in my Bujo?
I want to be sure, I think about it one day when I have some time and to follow it up. Apart from this, I wish to free up space in my internal hard disk (my brain!). If I get some bright idea or just think about something that I might want to pursue, I would like to dump it in my journal before I forget it or something else comes up in its place.
Later, you might have a relaxed day, for example, a weekend or a holiday. And on these days, instead of going around in circles and getting bored, you can just glance at your “Brain dump” page and find an actionable task that you like.
While creating your weekly, you can also remind yourself that you check your brain dump page every week. One idea recorded a few months ago may become a little more important. That’s the way I see it.
Brain dump in my bullet journal
Here is how I built my BuJo brain dump. I just created 2 pages:
- A fairly structured page for my blog.
- Another unstructured page for everything else! Absolutely EVERYTHING else.
For the structured brain dump page, I divided the page into several parts so I don’t have to search too much to find what I needed. Some topics I used to divide the page are:
- Article ideas
- Facebook post ideas
- Pinterest Ideas
- Instagram Ideas
- Shopping list
- Books to read
- Blogs to follow
For random thoughts or unstructured brain dump, it will be a little freer. I have kept a double page, in which I would write all my ideas into “Speech bubbles” as I go along. To better classify them, I would use a color code for each category like organization, family, friends, hobbies, etc.!
Here are some examples of my entries:
Clear the sideboard, try a mug cake, organize documents, sort clothes by category, create a miniature garden in an old glass candle-holder, etc.
For me, these examples have no deadline. These are not my priorities. Whenever I have some free time, I glance through these records and take up an item that interests me.