Welcome back!
Probably most everyone would like to decrease stress from their lives. In these trying times, decreasing stress is often difficult to accomplish. As we work hard to increase success in our professional and personal lives, we often seem to expend more energy than we should struggling with current economic conditions and family situations.
This morning I was catching up with the contents in my Google Reader, a task I don’t do often enough. One article of note was by Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey, a man I consider a mentor. His Blog Mastermind course is the reason this website exists. Although this site is still a work-in-progress, I owe Yaro a huge amount of thanks! He recently wrote an article called How to Brain Dump Tasks to Increase Your Productivity.
How to Brain Dump
The basic concept of a brain dump is the same as unloading or ridding yourself of all the extraneous information and mental clutter in your mind. Many times we keep our to-do lists in our mind, then we struggle to remember what we need to do, or we forget and blame ourselves for not remembering. We don’t need the guilt, nor the worry, that we are forgetting things we should remember to increase the success in our lives.
Yaro’s article suggests using a technique whereby you clear the clutter from your mind by writing down every task you need to accomplish. In other words, dump whatever clutter is in your brain that is preventing you from accomplishing your goals.
The Morning Pages Tool
This article reminded me of a similar situation I had last year. For months at a time, I utilize the stream of consciousness writing first brought to our attention by Julia Cameron in her book The Artists Way. She presents the concept of writing morning pages first thing before we continue the rest of our day. Unloading everything on our brain without censor allows us to start each day with a clear mind.
Well, one morning I had so much on my mind I couldn’t even write the normal stream of conscious writing necessary to unload. Therefore, I started a to-do list. As the list grew, I realized why I had seen so little productivity for the last few days, if not weeks. I finally set the 8 1/2″ x 11″ notebook down, only to pick it up again a few minutes later when I thought of more tasks to add to the list. Eventually I ended up with 112 line items that were separate and distinct tasks. A few of the tasks related to one another, but there were no duplicates.
When I was finally finished, and you will know when that is, I sat with what I am sure was a stunned look on my face. I could not believe there were 112 tasks competing for attention in my mind. Further more, none of the tasks were frivolous. All were important by varying degrees and all needed attention.
The Benefits of Downloading the Brain
There is no way I can convey the relief of just having that load dumped onto paper. I would like to say all tasks have now been accomplished, but I won’t even go there! But, many are done and crossed off the list. Probably many more than if I had not written them down in the first place.
By writing down the tasks, ideas, and thoughts you have stirring around in your mind, you will open up the door for:
- Increased energy to accomplish the tasks
- Increased ability to sleep well at night
- Increased desire to check off the items
- Increased clarity to see what needs to be done
- Increased insight into future projects
- Increased ability to prioritize the tasks
- Increased ability to delegate what you can
- Increased desire to continue the list as items come to mind
I am sure there are other reasons why clearing your mind will increase your success, but I also know dumping what is in your brain and cluttering your mind will definitely help decrease stress.
Further Tools to Consider
Once you have written down your tasks, there are time management and productivity tools you can use to accomplish what you have set forth on paper (and in the atmosphere). Yaro’s article has several suggestions – you can click on it here.
When you have written your list, I would love to hear the results. How did you feel, did it help you complete the tasks, do you sleep better at night, experience less stress?
Here are a couple of links to the resources in this post:
Yaro Starak’s website:Entrepreneurs- Journey
Julia Cameron: The Artists Way
