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Brain Dumping is primarily about dumping ideas, thoughts and tasks to support mental relief. Especially your personal Bullet Journal can provide great support for self-management and mental stress reduction. Therefore I often use spreads, which simply help and support me in my everyday life. Today I would like to introduce the method a little bit and show you, how to use this page in your bujo setup. You will also find a few personal examples as inspiration.
What's brain dumping?
Do you often have the feeling that you have too many thoughts at once or that you forget things that you need later? That you have too many ideas buzzing around in your head and you have the feeling to get rid of everything and collect them? With brain dumping you transfer everything that is going through your head to a medium. This can be a piece of paper or a digital medium like the notepad. It is an individual possibility to derive unstructured ideas and sometimes relatively senseless thoughts. My notebook for example is perfect for such mental health lists, so I create a "brain dump spread" every month, which is empty at first and will be filled over the month. I leave the layout open, so that everything can be written down easily without structure. With this spread you'll never lose ideas again, you can immediately just write everything down somewhere and reduce stress at the same time.
how to use the method?
This is how I proceed with brain dumping during the month:
first, simply write down everything that goes through your head: professional tasks and private to-dos, fears, worries, wishes, ideas. Just anything that pops into your head, no matter how small, large, important or unimportant it may seem to you.
Often time passes by after the first step. Later I evaluate how important some things seem to me, which tasks I really have to or want to do and which ideas I want to use for the future.
Then you can start to organize your list. What has priority, what can you do immediately, what can you do later, how do you want to implement a new idea? To do this, you can simply create a monthly to-do list in the Bullet Journal and write down everything you select. Additionally I always make a bucket list for wishes and dreams. Also for activities at certain times of the year I transfer ideas from my Brain Dump page to my Bucket list. At the beginning of each new journal I always create a list for big goals, there I can always add new goals that come out of the brain dump.
Personal tip: I use Brain Dump pages to simply write everything down and then transfer it to other lists in my journal. This way I can filter better: What are goals, what do I want to achieve this month, what do I have to do immediately and what can I do if I have time and desire.
Reduce stress, organize your thoughts - collect ideas in bullet journal
What could be on a brain dump page? I have summarized a few examples for you, so you can imagine how the method works (these are personal notes):
buy new pillowcases for the winter season
Redecorate table in living room
need to call Anna
still need new shoes for the winter
need a register for my tax folder
need to adjust the page descriptions on my blog
need more pictures for my autumn moodboard
the bed must be freshly covered
the balcony furniture must go to the cellar
want to bake again, search for a recipe
don't forget: in the second week of october the movie that you want to see will be released
make a quiz in the story
the tires on the car must be changed
shopping trip with mom
arrange a date with my sister
get white printer paper
get pumpkins and collect leaves
create the set up for my new bullet journal
still have to check the mails from ...
how can i apply the method from the book i am reading?
really want to make pumpkin soup this month
buy ink pads
illustrate more autumn things
I need new tweezers
buy a gift for ninas baby
create a monthly review in my bullet journal
I hope this little insight helps you to use the brain dump spread correctly.
Happy Journaling! :)
