Do a Brain Dump
Don’t Let Your Brain be a Dump.
Our brains are amazing. Photographing, organizing, calculating, reasoning, they can do it all. Constantly adjusting to new situations, making new connections as we step out of our comfort zone and try new activities, collect new data.
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But they can also get overwhelmed and cluttered. Sometimes we need to offload important information and plans so we don’t have it slip out of our conscious active memory and become lost in the maze of clutter that we accumulate every day. We also need to avoid collecting needless and irrelevant information that adds to our brain and obscures the vital core.Surfing the web, emails, and clickbait is not only a waste of time, especially as we grow older, but it drags us away from focus on the most important tasks and saps our energy. It seduces us, causing us to believe we are moving forward while we are just spinning our wheels.
Sometimes we have too many important plans running in our heads and we need to do a ‘brain dump’, writing or recording plans in process so that we don’t forget. It helps to organize our efforts and make sure we are effective. I am going to do that shortly, after completing this post, because I know that my projects are piling up.
It reminds me of college days when my roommate Dean talked in his sleep. I would hear him and it would waken me, but by the time I was conscious he would stop. I told him he was talking in his sleep, but he didn’t believe me. So one night I put a pen and paper by my bedside and wrote down what he had said. I read it back to him the next morning. He still didn’t believe me, but at least I had a record of his words — it was wild.
I have taken a lesson from that. Keeping a pen and paper on my night stand enables me to remember thoughts in the night. Because without it I might believe that I would recall it in the morning, but inevitably I would not. Like dreams that are so real you think you would remember but you they fade with more sleep. The mind has a way of coming up with solutions while in unconscious mode and you need to catch those.
I take my phone with me when I walk, not just so that my wife can reach I take my phone with me when I walk, not just so that my wife can reach me if necessary, but also for the note feature where I can record thoughts for later use in writing. On the other hand I try to keep my phone away from me, usually on the charger, when I am at home so that I don’t keep scrolling — a habit that I am trying to squash.
