Practice Brain Dumps #

During our working time our minds collects feedback about the work we are doing and during our downtime our minds wanders and tiny sparks of brilliance come up. Subconsciously we try to hold them for as long as possible in our working memory but unfortunately our capacity is very limited thus creating situations in which we can’t think of anything new because we are at capacity.

For this reason, practicing brain dumps from time to time has a positive impact our performance because it brings order to the chaos that our working memory has become. It helps you situate yourself by doing a recap of recent events, emptying the working memory of currently going on things and provide structure for the upcoming events.

Here is how it works:

1. Make a list of all the things you are currently handling and are in your working memory
2. Remove those items that no longer seem to make sense
3. Make a list of all the upcoming things you can recall
4. Group what you have had in your working memory. If a an item can’t be placed under one of the upcoming items list, then you have another thing coming 🎶.
5. Add all the things that need to happen in order to bring your upcoming events to completion

Unfortunately this is not a one time thing and no matter how well organised you are it needs to happen from time to time because there are benefits in having your mind occupied with a few things to think about at all times thus having everything always perfectly organised is actually detrimental for your creativity.

A rule of thumb for when this practice is needed is when you can no longer focus on the work at hand because you have too many things going on in your head.