How to do a brain dump to help manage mum life

Our brains are constantly thinking, overthinking, and trying to process everything that we have going on in our lives, and one way that we can better organise our thoughts, become a more organised mum, or become a more productive mum, is to do a brain dump.

If you’ve heard of a brain dump but not sure how it can help you in your mum life, or if you haven’t heard about it but are keen to learn more, here is everything you need to know about brain dumps.

What is a brain dump?

A brain dump is when you write down everything that’s in your brain, which helps clear your brain of clutter, thereby lessening any feelings of overwhelm you may have.

Benefits of a brain dump

An overloaded brain makes us forget things, avoid things, and can even cause feelings of anger and resentment, which may impact how we function.

Some of the benefits of doing a brain dump for mums are to eliminate these things, as well as helping you to better organise your life by taking action on all the things you need to do.

How to do a brain dump

You can do a brain dump as often as you like, which could be doing a brain dump whenever you feel mum burnout approaching, or doing it weekly.

Whatever frequency you choose, here is how to do a brain dump to help you manage mum life.

Brain dump organisation

Before you start a brain dump, think about how you want to organise it.

Do you want to include everything in your brain in the same place, or do you want to categorise your brain dump items?

If you want to categorise your brain dump items, some category ideas are:

• Family
• Work
• School
• Home

You could also organise your brain dump into categories after you write everything down in once place.

Once you’ve decided how to organise your brain dump, it’s time to start writing it.

Start writing

This is the main part of a brain dump, which is to write everything in your brain down, either with a pen and paper, or using a digital note taking app.

Some of the many things you can include in your brain dump are:

• To do list items
• Decluttering projects
• Ideas
• Plans
• Appointments that need to be made, or that are upcoming
• Deep cleaning tasks
• Family goals, or personal goals
• Bills to pay
• Grocery list items
• Clothing or toys to buy
• Self-care activities to do
• TV shows to watch
• Books to read
• Work ideas
• Date night ideas
• Travel to do list
• Gift ideas
• Everything and anything else that’s swirling around in your brain

Writing a brain dump will take some time, so you can always take a break if needed, and you can add to it over a few days.

Add date specific items

Once you’ve written your brain dump, go through your phone and paperwork in your home, look at your family calendar, and look for anything else that has date specific things on it, and add it to your brain dump.

Some examples of date specific things include:

• Bills
• Appointments
• Kids birthday parties
• School events
• After school clubs

Once your brain dump is finished, it will be long and feel overwhelming, which is where the next step will help.

Take action

Once your brain dump is written, it’s time to take action on it, which is where you’ll start to work through each brain dump item and do something with it.

Here’s what you’ll do:

• Remove items that no longer need to be done
• Move items that you’d like to do, but don’t need to be done right now to another list, which you could call a future projects list
• Do anything that will take 2 minutes or less to finish, for example, messaging happy birthday to a friend
• Delegate brain dump items to other family members if possible
• Schedule all remaining brain dump items on the date they need to be done by in your paper or digital planner, or calendar so it gets done

A brain dump allows you to get everything out of your brain and onto paper, so you can start to work on things, and take control of the different aspects of life.

The best way to tackle everything on your brain dump is to remove things that no longer need doing, move things to a project list that you’d like to do, but aren’t essential right now, complete quick tasks immediately, delegate tasks to family members, and schedule remaining tasks in your calendar so nothing is forgotten.

Doing a brain dump clears all of the clutter you have in your brain, helping you to feel less overwhelmed, burnt out, and more in control of your mum life.

Do you think a brain dump will benefit you in your mum life?