How to Instantly Clear Your Mind and Supercharge Your Productivity
The Life-Changing Benefits of Brain Dumping That No One Talks About!
As the amount of information available to us increases, we are becoming more stressed. Our brains are not prepared to deal with this overload of information.
Any friend that I talk to in person or on social media is facing anxiety and stress at some level.
The issue is that no one actually understands why it is happening to them.
I was facing the same issue; I was constantly worrying, overthinking, and getting stressed. I didn’t know what the reason was. I tried everything I could to be happy. But still, the anxiety and the headaches were not leaving.
Until one day, I was in a lecture that was about overthinking, where the teacher explained that it takes energy for our mind to remember things. The more information we are trying to remember and solve in our working memory, the more load it puts on our brain, and we’ll start overthinking, which will convert into stress, which will then affect our happiness and productivity.
Then the teacher shared that in order to get out of this situation, you need to brain dump the things that are going on in your mind. Once you do it, you will have a clear mind, which will help you focus on your work and be happy.
I applied this technique of brain dumping, and I got so many benefits.
I’m going to talk about the five benefits that have mainly impacted my life in a positive way.
First, you should know what brain dumping is.
Brain dump: This means that you express your thoughts, feelings, any task, or whatever is going on in your mind into physical or digital notes. In this way, you are clearing your mind to focus on the next piece of information.
Here are 5 major benefits you’ll receive from doing regular brain dumps.
1. Clears mental clutter
Your brain processes 70,000 thoughts per day.
This clutters your mind. You can’t think clearly, make any decisions, or focus on any task.
These random thoughts confuse your mind about where you should be focusing.
After doing the brain dump, you externalize everything on the paper.
It frees up your mental space to think, process, and make decisions. You feel light from the burden of thoughts, and it helps you overcome headaches (this worked for me personally).
2. Enhances Focus
When you are trying to focus on a task, your mind starts pooping up all the random thoughts, making it harder for your mind to work with complete focus. The quality of work you do gets affected.
Sometimes you manage it well, but most of the time, due to those thoughts, you get distracted. For example, when you are writing an article and a thought pops up to check email, you see there are two newsletters unread, and you start reading them. Once you do that, it becomes a rabbit hole where you get stuck.
By brain-dumping, you are making your mind clear, which helps you focus on the task you are doing without thoughts popping out of your head.
Empty your mind; be formless and shapeless, like water. — Bruce Lee
You can read more about how focus helps you achieve big productivity goals in this article (Why simplicity equals productivity).
3. Reduces stress and anxiety
There is always a load on your mind when you are trying to remember something. By doing this, you are opening tabs in your mind like you do on your computer. The more things it processes, the higher the chances of getting it hanged.
The same happens with your mind when you are trying to remember your grocery list, your meeting schedules, your expenses, and what not. You are using your limited mental energy on the things that you can just write down on paper, and they will do the job.
This increases your feelings of stress and anxiety from the pressure that you might forget something important.
Brain dumping helps you overcome that feeling by giving your mind security, that all important information is saved. This helps you so much in relaxing your mind.
“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” — Anne Frank
4. Improves Creativity
Yes, brain dumping has a direct impact on your creativity.
The more load you put on your mind, the less creative you will be; the less load you have on your mind, the more creative you will be.
There was an experiment done by researchers Shira Baron and Moshe Bar from Bar-IIAN University’s Brain Research Center.
They found that individuals with a lot on their minds tend to be less creative.
The experimenters ran a creative test while also giving some participants a list of very long numbers to remember at the beginning and others very short numerical lists.
People given little to keep track of tend to be more creative.
Less cognitive load meant more creativity.
You can read more about this research in this article. How a Brain Dump Can Unlock Your Creativity
5. Boost Productivity
Once you have a clear mind, enhanced focus, less stress, and creativity unleashed, it directly impacts your productivity. You tend to be more organized and productive.
If you make a decision on what to do by having a to-do list in your mind, you are going to forget some important tasks, but once you brain dump everything, you decide which one of the tasks is important and which one is urgent, so based on that, you can plan your schedule and get the most out of your time.
Conclusion:
Brain dumping helps you in all areas of your life — mental health, emotional health, and career. The more decisions you make on paper instead of in your mind, the more you will make better decisions.
Try it yourself and see how much lighter and more productive you’ll feel after doing this exercise.
If you liked this story, you can follow me on Medium so you can get my life lessons to become a happier, more productive, and more wealthy person. Mindful Kamal
Thank you for reading this story.
Kamal
