The Brain Dump Sorter
Your head is full and none of it is in order. Some of it is urgent, some of it is not yours, and some of it has been rattling around for three weeks doing nothing but taking up room. You do not need a productivity system. You need it out of your head and sorted once.
Before you start
- Do not tidy your thoughts first. The mess is the input.
- Use voice mode if your app has it. Talking gets more out than typing does.
- Open Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini and go for about two minutes without stopping.
I'm going to brain dump everything in my head. It will be disorganized and I will jump around. Do not interrupt me and do not tidy it up as I go.
Some context first:
- Who else is in this household:
- Anyone I can hand things to:
- What this week already looks like:
Here's the dump:
Now sort all of it into these, and nothing else:
📅 CALENDAR - has a date or needs one. Include the date if I said it.
🛒 SHOPPING - anything I need to buy or pick up.
🚗 ERRANDS - requires leaving the house.
📞 SOMEONE ELSE - things that belong to my partner, my kids, or someone I can ask. Say who.
⏳ NOT THIS WEEK - real, but it can genuinely wait. Give it back to me next week.
🌫️ SOMEDAY OR NEVER - things I have been carrying that are not actually going to happen. Be gentle but be honest.
💭 NOT A TASK - the worries and the feelings. Do not turn these into to-do items. Just name them and set them down.
Then, at the very end:
🔴 THE THREE THINGS
Out of everything, the three that actually matter this week. If I only do these, the week is fine.
RULES:
- Do not add anything I did not say. No "you might also want to."
- Do not give me a productivity system or suggest an app.
- The "not a task" category matters. Some of what I said is not a job to be done and turning it into one is how it got heavy in the first place.
- Keep the whole thing on one screen if you can. I need to be able to screenshot it.
What to expect
Everything out of your head and into seven buckets, with three things circled. The two categories people are surprised by are Someone Else and Not A Task, because a decent amount of what feels like your workload turns out to be neither yours nor work.
Make it better next time
Screenshot the result and put it somewhere you will see it. The sorting is only half the relief. The other half is not having to hold it any more, and that only works if you can look it up instead of remembering it.