Motivate Monday #4 - Brain Dumping

Happy Monday!! Today, I am grateful for a full weekend, and a warm weather week 😊 We just will pretend that it is not our last warm week before fall 🍂

I wanted to share with everyone another organizational tip. I LOVE notebooks. And journals. And paper. And, ohh, sticky notes ❤️. Back to school shopping is better than Christmas to me, honestly. Staples? Aside from Ulta, it’s probably my favorite store. So, naturally, I need to fill up all of these notebooks and journals!

I’m also a huge list person, which comes in handy with my paper fetish. I adore making lists! For example, I will write my grocery list, then re-write it, organizing items by section and isle at the grocery store. Lists are so great at organizing anything! Making lists is a great stress reliever as well, because you’re not constantly worried about remembering the 1,736 things you need to do.

Here is where brain dumping comes in to play! This is the best kind of list to clear your head, friends. And it’s super simple to do. There are a few different ways to go about brain dumping…

First thing in the morning, to set a path and intention for your day, as well as prioritize tasks
Just before bed to clear your head of pending tasks, and to organize the next day
As needed, whenever you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed by the amount of things you need to do.

Now, grab a notebook (or you can snag my printable 👇🏼). Divide the paper into a top half, and a bottom half. At the top, write down EVERYTHING on your mind. All the things you need to do, every task, appointment, errand, chore, etc. This is what we call the brain dump. Dump it all out on that piece of paper!

After you have completed your list, go back through and circle the five MOST IMPORTANT things you need to do today. We will write these down, in the first column. Next, star the five things you hope you can finish today and write these in the middle column. Everything else will go in the third column, and those will be the things that we can do if we have extra time, or carry over to tomorrow.

Making lists and writing our to-do’s is much more than an orginizational task. What happens when we say “Oh, I don’t need to write that down. I’ll remember”? We forget! Or we’re so stressed and pre-occupied trying to focus on those tasks, we forget something else in the process. Writing down our tasks frees up our brain power to focus on more important things. I know I said in an earlier post that we can only make so many decisions in a day, and that is 💯 true. Why waste some of those decisions remembering to pick up milk at the store?! We will become more productive and more successful by mapping out our tasks.

I hope this tip helps you get more organized, and less stressed! Please share my post, and comment below about any organizational tips you find super helpful!