What a brain dump is, and where the pile goes next

Why a brain dump helps

A head holds only a few things at once. Cowan’s 2001 review puts the limit at about four chunks.

Two studies look at unfinished tasks, and at what writing them down does. In experiments by Masicampo and Baumeister (2011), unfinished goals disrupted performance on an unrelated task and brought intrusive thoughts, and making a specific plan for the goal removed those effects even though the goal was still unfinished. In a sleep-lab study by Scullin and colleagues (2018), 57 young adults wrote for five minutes before bed. Those who wrote a to-do list fell asleep about nine minutes faster than those who wrote down what they had already done, and the more specific the list, the faster they fell asleep.

Neither study tested brain dumps as such, and both were laboratory studies. What they share is writing down the unfinished thing and making it specific. A dump supplies the first half. The sorting afterwards supplies the second, which is why that step matters as much as the dump.

How to do a brain dump

1. Set a timer for five to ten minutes.
2. Write whatever is on the mind, in the order it arrives. Tasks, errands, worries, ideas, things to remember and things being avoided all belong, large and small together.
3. Do not sort, edit or judge while writing. Half a sentence is fine. A repeat is fine too, and a thought that keeps returning is worth noticing.
4. Stop when the timer ends or when new items slow to a trickle.
5. Read the list once, then sort it. Mark what is a task, what is worth keeping, what needs a decision and what can be let go. Give each task a next physical action and each decision a day.

The steps are the same for people with ADHD and for anyone else with a full head.

What a dump looks like

Sorted afterwards, the same list falls into a few kinds. Some lines are tasks, such as the passport, the lightbulbs and the reply to Marta. One is worth keeping, the newsletter idea, and one is a line for the record, the proofs coming back right. One is a question to think through, whether the release should slip. Three share a subject and have no home yet. Those kitchen lines are the sign that a project is forming.

What happens to the pile afterwards

The dump is the easy half. A pile only helps once each line has been read and given somewhere to go, and by hand that means opening every line and filing it. It is also the step that tends to get put off, and an unsorted pile is just a longer list.

Working memory in nenspace is built around that second step. Capture is instant. Enter adds a thought, with no title, no folder and nothing to decide, and shift and enter adds a line. In a browser that supports speech recognition, a thought can be spoken instead. Each thought is then read, and a word may appear under it saying where it could go.

task

a new task in the inbox

note

a new note

logbook

a line on today’s logbook page

task · kitchen

into that project

note · ideas

into that folder

add to · book ideas

added to the end of that note

back · fri

rests and returns that day

with nen

opens a conversation with those words as the draft, and sends nothing

The word is a suggestion, and a thought with no word simply stays. Tapping a word sends the thought there. By default nothing moves without a tap. Nothing is ever deleted, and every send has an undo.

Sift gathers every thought that knows where it goes, grouped by where. One group can be sent, or all of them at once, and a thought can be left out or dragged to another group. When three or more thoughts gather around one subject over a few days and have no home, the pile can offer to make one, a project or a folder, with a name that can be edited first. Not now leaves them as they are.

The words come from a model reading the thoughts and can be wrong, which is why each one waits for a tap. This is a workflow to opt into. It does not promise automatic insight, perfect recall or a model watching a life in the background. The privacy policy explains how captured thoughts are processed, and capturing is free.

Brain dump apps

A notebook does the job, and so does any notes app. An app earns its place when capture is quicker than opening a page and something helps with the sorting afterwards. Four checks are worth making.

• Can a thought be captured without a title or a folder?
• Is sorting offered, or left entirely to hand?
• Does anything move without asking?
• Can a move be undone, and is anything ever deleted?

Working memory in nenspace answers each of them as described above. The overview covers the rest of the space, and the comparison pages set it beside other tools.