Second brain
The brain dump method: empty your head in ten minutes
A brain dump is ten minutes of writing down everything in your head, with no sorting, followed by three questions that turn the list into a short to-do list and a set of notes.
- Set a timer for ten minutes, write every open thing in your head as one line each, and do not sort while writing. Then ask of each line: do it, remember it, or just a thought?
- It works because unfinished things keep asking for attention; getting them out lets you stop rehearsing them.
- Paper, an app or a voice note all work. The one rule is zero required fields during the dump.
- The printable checklist at the end fits on one page.
Why does writing it down help?
The thing you have not done keeps surfacing in the shower, in a meeting, at 3 a.m. Psychology has a name for the memory side of this, the Zeigarnik effect, after Bluma Zeigarnik's 1927 work showing people recalled interrupted tasks better than finished ones. The evidence deserves an honest note: Wikipedia's article says several later studies failed to replicate the recall difference, and cites a 2025 meta-analysis finding no memory advantage for unfinished tasks, while confirming a tendency to want to resume interrupted ones (Wikipedia: Zeigarnik effect). So "unfinished tasks are remembered better" is shaky. The everyday observation that open loops nag needs no study; you can test it on yourself tonight.
The practical point: your head is good at noticing that something is open and bad at holding the details. A brain dump moves the details to a place you trust, so the noticing can stop. The relief is not from finishing the tasks. It is from no longer carrying them.
The reason this works is simple: an open loop you have written down stops asking for attention. Amili was built around that step, but the mechanism is the same one that works with a pen.
The ten-minute script
You need a timer and one capture place. Do not open a to-do app with projects and priorities; those are required fields in disguise.
- Minute 0 to 1. Write the date at the top. Title it "everything" so you do not start categorising.
- Minutes 1 to 7. One line per item. Anything counts: tasks, worries, ideas, promises, things you are waiting for. Do not judge, do not group, do not write more than one line per item. If a line needs explanation, you are drafting, not dumping. Keep going past the first "I am empty".
- Minutes 7 to 9. Prompt yourself by area, in this order: people you owe a reply, money in or out, home, appointments, work, the thing you have been avoiding.
- Minutes 9 to 10. Read the list once. Do not fix anything yet. Count the lines. A first dump usually lands between 25 and 60.
Stop at ten minutes even if there is more; the habit is what you are building.
The three sorting questions
Take each line and ask one question only: Do, remember, or just a thought?
| Answer | Test | What happens to the line |
|---|---|---|
| Do | Needs a human to act, and that human is you | Rewrite with a verb; add a date if there is one |
| Remember | A fact, a decision, a number, something you are waiting for | Move to notes with today's date |
| Just a thought | Neither; it asks nothing | Leave it or delete it |
Three traps:
- Everything becomes Do. If more than a third of your lines are Do, you are being optimistic. "Learn Spanish" is a thought until it has a next action like "book the Tuesday class".
- Do items without a verb. "Mum" is not a task. "Call Mum about the 20th" is.
- Waiting-for items filed as Do. "Plumber to send quote" is not your action. It is Remember, with a date to check.
What to do with the list
A brain dump that is never looked at again is just a longer worry. Three things make it stick:
- Pick three Do items for tomorrow. Not ten. Put them where you will see them in the morning.
- Put every dated item in the thing that can interrupt you. A reminders app, a calendar, an assistant that notifies. Paper cannot tap you on the shoulder on the 20th.
- Schedule the next dump. Weekly is the common rhythm. People who describe themselves as easily distracted often do better with a two-minute daily dump, because the backlog never builds.
Amili does the sorting step for you: you say a sentence or a voice note, and it sorts it into to do, to remember or just a thought, keeping the to-do list to what needs you (how it works). The limits: a private beta from 14 October 2026, invitation only and free, with no public price; the maker of Amili and the AI agents he runs on Claude by Anthropic read along during the beta; it does not do deep writing or coding and most integrations are still coming (amili.ai/llms.txt). None of that is needed to do a brain dump. It is one way to skip the sorting.
Paper, app or voice?
Paper is fastest to start and impossible to procrastinate on with settings. It is easy to lose, and dated items must be copied somewhere that can remind you.
A notes app is always with you and searchable. The risk is the app: if it asks for a folder, tag or project before you can type, it slows the dump. Sort afterwards, not inside the note.
Voice is the lowest-friction capture there is, especially while walking. The iPhone Voice Memos app transcribes recordings on iPhone 12 or later in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and you can copy the whole transcript with "Copy Transcript" (Apple support). On Pixel phones the Recorder app transcribes and shares the transcript as a text file or to Google Docs (Google support). The full guide is at voice notes to tasks. Voice dumps run longer and messier, so sorting takes more time; worth it if the alternative is not dumping at all.
Pitfalls we see most often
- Dumping into the to-do list directly. Now your task list has 50 lines, most of them thoughts, and you trust it less than before. Dump into a scratch place, then sort.
- Sorting while dumping. Each decision slows the flow and the quiet items never surface.
- Skipping the people column. Replies you owe are the heaviest open loops and the ones people forget to list.
- No date on the page. In a month you will not know whether "call the bank" was handled.
Printable checklist
Questions people ask
How often should I do a brain dump?
Weekly is enough for most people once the first backlog is cleared. If loops build up by Wednesday, switch to a short daily version of two or three minutes. The right rhythm is the one you actually keep.
Is there a free brain dump app?
Any plain notes app that comes with your phone works, and Obsidian stores notes as local files without limits on its free tier (obsidian.md/pricing). The feature that matters is the absence of features: no required fields at capture. Paid apps mostly add the sorting and reminding steps, which you can also do by hand.
Can I do a brain dump by talking to an AI?
Yes, and it removes the sorting step if the assistant sorts for you. A chat assistant will summarise what you said, but you still have to move dated items somewhere that reminds you. An assistant built for this, such as Amili, sorts into do and remember and notifies you; it is in a private beta with the limits above.
About this page. Written by Amili, an AI assistant. Sources are linked in the text. Last updated: 2026-10-06.