Last night I was facing a bit of overwhelm just thinking about all the stuff that needed to get done this weekend. Argh! I knew there was more to-dos than hours in the day. I was especially anxious because I am trying to take Sundays off, with nothing but church, reading, family, and napping on the agenda.
So, I decided to use a brain dump to get a bit of clarity on the situation. If you have never done a brain dump before, it is just getting everything on your mind out on paper (or screen, if you prefer). I have used these in many types of circumstances:
- Life picture – getting all the different activities in my life down on paper. I usually follow this up with a mind map for even greater clarity.
- Work – I will jot down all the projects I am working on, as well as things from my goals for the year to plan out my month or week.
- Small scale – this is what I did last night, since I was only concerned about one days’ worth of activities.
A brain dump will help me do three things:
Clarify
Getting everything out of my head and onto paper helps me to realistically evaluate and prioritize things. This can help me see the big picture instead of jumping from one thing to another.
Last night I just started writing every little thing that was stressing me out about what needed to be done. Any little job, things I wanted to ask people, things I wanted to do for me. Anything and everything that was flitting through my head went onto the paper. And as I wrote, one thing reminded me of another. Those also went down onto the paper. Finally I had a long list of thing that needed to be attended to.
Categorize
The thing that I do different with a brain dump than a regular to-do list, is I break the list into categories. These can be set up however makes sense to you. You might set it up by location, time of day things need to be done, or any scheme that seems to fit the list.
For my brain dump last night my main categories were ‘in town’, ‘with others’, ‘budget’, ‘household’, ‘study’, and ‘blogging’. With my list now set up in categories I was able to see that the ‘in town’ category did not need my attention and I could send someone else to run the errands.
Next I assigned a time estimate for each task.
Prioritize
Many people will tell you to only select three things to work on each day and then focus on those. However, I only have Saturday to get my at home work done, so only getting to three things on my list just doesn’t work for me.
So, I looked over my list and starred the items that I knew were must dos, and assessed where I could cut if I ran out of time (or energy) as the day wore on. I then took my tasks with their time estimates and started lumping things together in half-hour to hour long increments. Next, I grabbed my planner and did some time-blocking.
For instance, “household jobs” got a one hour slot and included cleaning and getting laundry started. I worked through the list putting my chore chunks into time on the planner. I also blocked off time for lunch, and tried not to crowd too much. If I had a chunk of jobs estimated at 25 minutes, it would get a 30 minute block on the planner.
The results of my brain dump
So how has my day gone after my brain dump? Well, the biggest benefit has been the reduction in stress. I worked the plan out last night before I went to bed. Took advantage of a few minutes last night to get a start on a couple of jobs (grocery list and menu plan for the week). And then today woke up just needing to work the plan.
And there is the rub… Actually the day has gone very smoothly. The biggest hangup has been my lack of estimating skills. I had some paperwork to fill out that I thought would take 15 minutes. It has taken 15 minutes and a couple of emails and is still not done.
And the budget. I keep thinking I can update the budget and plan for next month in 30 minutes, and it keeps taking me much longer. But it is done.
In truth, I would not have gotten nearly as much done today without the brain dump because I would have tended to get overwhelmed, get on Facebook, or just start reading for fun. So brain dump for the win. How do you plan for hectic days?