A Brain Dump Template, and a Way to Skip the Sorting

A brain dump template you can copy in ten seconds, an ADHD version for when you have no free hands, and what to do with the list once it is written.

A brain dump is emptying everything out of your head onto a page, in no order, without stopping to judge whether it belongs there. It works because remembering everything takes effort, and most people give up halfway when they stop to organise a list they're still writing.

Below is a template to copy. Underneath it is what to do with the list once it's written, which is the step most brain dump templates leave out.

If you usually stop before you sort, you can build a shortcut on your iPhone that does the sorting for you. It's further down this page.

The template

Write everything down first, and sort it afterwards. Doing both at once is what makes people stop halfway.

Step 1: Everything out

Set a timer for ten minutes and write every single thing in your head. Don't group it, don't order it, don't decide if it's important. Half sentences are fine.

Everything in my head right now:
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Keep going past the point where it feels finished. The last five items are usually the ones that were actually keeping you awake.

Step 2: Sort into five piles

Now go through what you wrote and put a letter beside each line:

D  Do        takes under two minutes, do it now
S  Schedule  needs a specific day or time
W  Waiting   depends on someone else
P  Project   more than one step, needs breaking down
N  Not now   real, but not this month

If a line gets no letter, it's a worry rather than a task, so move it to a separate line at the bottom under "things on my mind that aren't jobs". If you leave worries mixed in with tasks, the list often feels heavier afterwards rather than lighter.

Step 3: Take three

Don't try to do the whole list today. Pick three from Do or Schedule and put them somewhere you'll see them tomorrow. The rest is written down, so you can stop holding it in your head.

An ADHD brain dump template

The standard template asks you to sit down at a desk, with ten spare minutes, feeling calm. When you most need a brain dump, you're rarely calm or sitting down.

Three changes to try if you have ADHD:

Drop step 2 to three piles. Now, Later, Not a task. Five categories means making a decision on every line, and making those decisions can be more tiring than writing the list.

Write the trigger, not the task. "Dentist" beats "Ring the dentist to book a check-up for both of us, ideally a Thursday". You're leaving a note for yourself, not writing instructions for a stranger.

Do it in bursts, not sessions. A ten-minute weekly brain dump assumes you can hold everything for a week. Emptying four or five things at a time, whenever they come to mind, is more realistic and means you're holding less in your head.

Here's the three-pile version as one block. Copy it, keep it in a note on your phone, and start a new one whenever the old one fills up:

BRAIN DUMP

Everything out. Trigger words are enough. Don't sort while you write.
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Now mark each line with one letter:
N  Now         today
L  Later       real, but not today
X  Not a task  a worry, not a job

Pick three N lines and put them somewhere you'll see them:
1.
2.
3.

Anything marked X stays here. It's written down, so you can stop holding it in your head.

Most brain dump templates leave the X pile out, and that's why a brain dump can leave you feeling worse than when you started. A worry written next to eleven tasks reads as a twelfth task. Once you mark it X, you know it's a worry rather than a job, so you can stop trying to work out what to do about it.

Paper can't really help with doing it in bursts, because the thought usually arrives while you're driving, in the shower, or holding the baby. You can build a shortcut on your iPhone that takes one or two items at a time when you say them out loud, and sorts them into your categories at the same time. You still have to look at the lists to act on them, and it won't catch a thought you never say out loud.

Why paper brain dumps stop working

Most brain dump advice assumes you'll come back and do it again next week. In practice the second one rarely happens.

Nothing about that is laziness. The format asks you to have ten free minutes exactly when you remember something, and you almost never do. So the thought goes back into your head, where it stays at all hours, and the list on the fridge is out of date within a fortnight.

The template above is worth doing. It just needs something to catch the thoughts that arrive during the rest of the week.

Talking it out instead

You can say the task out loud when you think of it, and let your phone sort it into the right list.

You talk, however it comes out, mid-ramble and out of order:

"We're out of nappies and wipes, I keep meaning to book the six-week check, health visitor's coming Tuesday at eleven, and I need bananas."

A few seconds later the shortcut has sorted what you said into your categories, and every line is a task you can tick off. You didn't type anything, open anything, or decide which pile each item belonged in.

You choose the categories: the Now / Later / Not a task set above works, so does Work / Home / People, so does the five-pile version. You write them once into the prompt, the instruction you give the AI, and it sorts everything into those categories from then on. You never have to do step 2 yourself.

So you never have to book time for a brain dump. It takes the four seconds it needs to say one sentence, whenever something comes to mind: walking to the car, waiting for the kettle, or lying awake at half two with a thought you'd otherwise carry until morning. You say it, the shortcut files it in the right list, and you can stop holding it in your head.

Nothing piles up while you wait for your weekly ten minutes, because you're not waiting for them any more. And the ten-minute version at the top of this page becomes something you do when you feel like it, rather than the only way to make sure nothing is forgotten.

You build the shortcut in our course Hand Off the Mental Load, by tapping a few blocks together in the Shortcuts app that's already on your phone. Setting the Brain Dump shortcut up takes less than 10 minutes, and it's the first challenge, so you can build it for free. The rest of the course adds a way to send the list to your partner automatically, a second shortcut for logging your baby's activities with dates and times, and ways to start either shortcut without unlocking your phone.

It uses Apple Intelligence, Apple's built-in AI, so it needs an iPhone 15 Pro or 15 Pro Max, any iPhone 16 or newer, or an iPhone Air. Apple Intelligence costs nothing to use, and there is nothing to download. We made it for mums, so the examples use nappies, feeds and health visitors, and you can reword the categories and the prompts to fit your own life.

On an older iPhone or an Android, the template above still works. Keep it in a note on your phone rather than on paper, so it's with you when something comes to mind.