Hi, back when I was a highly effective person I started my brain dumps any cheap 10-cent notebook. I was on a budget and I sure wasn’t going to spend a lot of money three kids and so much responsibility. Once I got good at dumping I started working at organizing and chipping away and all my clutter and the next thing I knew I was off and running. You got this! Nobody’s ever going to see it but you! So it doesn’t have to be perfect!!

Brain dumps are such an amazing exersize. Getting all that info down onto paper not only relieves some overwhelm but also keeps me from forgetting info because it gets crammed out of my brain by new things. You’re so much better off getting this step mastered before jumping into your planning. Great work!

Hi Ana,

I’m so glad you found it helpful!

You’re so welcome. Breaking things down into doable tasks is one of the biggest keys to helping me accomplish goals and keep my priorities in line.

If it’s an extremely extensive brain dump {which it sounds like yours is!}, I have a separate notebook that I scribble all sorts of messy thoughts on. Then I work through each thought and transfer it over to my Task Management List in my bullet journal. Because I do brain dumps regularly now, and don’t have as many things to write down, I’ll occasionally create a page in my bullet journal and label it brain dump, then write down all those tasks. So really, you can do it either way! But to start, I would find a scrap piece of paper or a junk notebook and start dumping all your lists there. Then you’ll have a better idea of what to transfer over to your bullet journal. Hope that helps!