“Don’t forget to cancel the daycare. Don’t forget to pack the rain gear. Don’t forget…”
As we prepared for a trip to Sweden, my husband and I had a long long list of things we wanted to get done before the trip. Almost every interaction we had involved a “Don’t forget statement” We started going a bit nuts as there was so much to do.
Finally, we decided to sit down and do a brain dump and empty our heads of all the tasks we had on our mind. When we finished, it was like a breath of fresh air. We had it all down on paper and no longer swimming in our heads. Then we could go through and allocate the tasks to each other and whether it needed to be done, before, during or after the trip.
The brain dump is a classic thing to turn to when you are feeling overwhelmed. I regularly recommend this to clients because it turns something that was huge into something more tangible and on paper. It’s particularly good for people who are having trouble sleeping at night because they are thinking of all the things they have to do. Get up, write it down and get it out of your head.
Once it’s out of your head, you can then prioritise the tasks into what’s urgent and important – using the Eisenhower matrix (1).
So whenever you are feeling overwhelmed – use the brain dump.
Footnotes