Brain Dumping- Get rid of the mental clutter

I just read an excellent piece over on Personalexcellence.co about the value of dumping your mental clutter. Over the past year I've developed the habit of keeping a Bullet Journal, and I have found it to be helpful to me in many ways. It has two useful advantages I find I can no longer live without. One is it keeps me grounded in a project. I can find out in a glance where I am and what needs to happen next. The second, equally important advantage is I no longer forget important things. That has been the bane of my existence for pretty much my entire adult life. The simple act of writing them down helps reinforce them in my memory, and a system to make sure they aren't discarded prematurely? Genius.

I bring up the bullet journal because I now realize that's what I'm doing in it every morning- unloading a giant load of background chatter that keeps me from settling down and getting started on work. I am not exaggerating when I say I have wasted entire days unable to settle down and get to work because my mind is already stuffed full of "running processes," to use Celes' computer analogy. I could just let them run all day long. Updating my journal helps reset everything to zero so I can start fresh.

What sorts of things get dumped? Whatever is on my mind. The beauty of the brain dump is that it is free-form. You literally start writing or typing and put down whatever is in your head. We're talking about moving, for instance, and that might take us many miles from family. The foundation of the house is slowly disintegrating. I missed a weekend of gardening at a critical time of the season because the weather was so bad. I've been having dizzy spells thanks to? Alleries? inner ear fluid? Meniere's? (unknown at present).

Anyway-whew!- I could keep going on.  Clearly I need to finish dumping.

You get the idea. It's also a great tool for folks with ADHD. That mental clutter rules our lives. Any tool I can wield to cut that chatter down, I will try, and so far, this looks like a good one.