Does this sound familiar?

Your day has literally flown by, and despite having been hard at it all day long, you’ve finished the day further behind than when you started because new projects and more work got added to your plate.

Is this a regular issue? And if so, how can you get off this hamster wheel?

I feel your pain because that used to happen to me consistently. Probably just like you, I’ve been to more time management courses than I care to remember, and while the content was good, I found that I couldn’t find the time to apply the tools they provided.

“*It took me more time to complete these forms than it did to complete the work I was trying to get on top of!*”

Thankfully a solution was out there and like most things it was simple in practice and relatively quick to implement.

That solution?

The Brain Dump.

I always set aside some time (usually 20–30 minutes) to do a Brain Dump whenever I have a lot of noise in my head. You know that feeling; the feeling of overwhelm and of all those ideas and commitments bouncing around between your ears.

To help silence that noise and give you clarity about the important tasks on which you need to focus, you will find that the Brain Dump will serve you well. It will save you heaps of time, relieve lots of anxiety, and provide you with a solid action plan.

How To Perform A Brain Dump

To perform a Brain Dump all you need to do is get out a full page of paper, sit down, and write down everything you need to get done. I usually recommend writing down everything you were thinking about, not just work related thoughts.

My Suggested Sequence

1. List all the activities (both personal and business related) that you perform on a daily basis

2. List all the activities you perform on a weekly basis

3. List all the activities you perform on a monthly basis

4. On a quarterly basis

5. And finally, on an annual basis

The first time you do this might take a while if you have a lot on your mind. I recommend finding a quiet place to do this. Turn your phone off and avoid distractions such as the television, email, etc…

Once done, you should feel a lot better as you embrace the silence in your head. This is because you no longer need to use your brain to keep track of all these things. You can let the paper have the responsibility. I find this part very relieving and well worth the effort.

Now that everything you do has been added to the worksheet, I recommend recording next to each task the estimated time that task would take.

With the content from your brain “dumped” on paper, the next job is to organize the items on your list.

In my case I write everything down in one big dump session. I then grab a number of different coloured highlighter pens and work my way through the list to colour code and group tasks into categories such as “Business Management”, “Marketing”, “Admin Tasks” and “Personal”.

For example:

1 Business Management

2 Marketing

3 Admin Tasks

4 Personal

Once you have completed this, you will know how many hours a day (or week) you spend on admin, how many on marketing, etc…

Admin tasks should be delegated to an admin assistant or virtual assistant. Once you’ve transferred a number of the tasks to your admin’s list, the next step is to rank the remaining tasks by importance, from most important to least.

Now, when it’s time to get to work, you simply refer to your list and tackle them one by one. Best of all, you get to draw a big line through each task as you complete it (another very satisfying activity!). You can decide what tasks to delegate and what needs to be blocked into your calendar.

While I don’t consider this technique the answer to all your problems, I find it tremendously helpful as a way to release mental control of everything. Anyone who is a control freak trying to manage everything inside their brain will appreciate this.

If you have never performed a Brain Dump, I suggest you take an hour out of your day today to give it a try and see what impact it has on you. Just remember, it’s important to let go of the tasks once they are dumped, and then rely on the paper, not your brain, for tracking them.

Make sure you write down every little thing that comes to mind, from “buy milk” to “write blog

post on topic X” to “subscribe to Funnel Magazine”. ;-).

Have fun!