The intro post to this series is here, journaling for mental clarity is here, journaling through fear is here.

There are many journaling methods and planning methods that tell you to “empty your mind onto a page,” or “perform a mind dump”. This is usually a first step on the way to some other goal: planning your week, dealing with anxiety or finding a direction in life, etc. From GTD to Morning Pages everyone expects you to press a hidden button and just directly dump everything on your mind onto your journal.

The idea is that by emptying your mind onto a page you will be able to free more “processing power” to more high level thinking and planning. Your mind will be free of noise, will be relieved of the need to track and remember things, and will be able to do what you really need it to do: make decisions, plan ahead, come up with new ideas, allow you to be creative.

This is great in theory, but in practice I find myself sitting at a desk with an empty page and and a pen, my mind buzzing with stuff, and the general instruction “just write everything down!”

Where to start? How do you pull out the first thread from all that tangled jumble? How do you focus on mind dumping and not reflexively go into the censoring, editing, sorting process?

How to Start Journaling to Clear Your Mind

Pick one of these prompts to start with. I’ll explain later why they work:

• Time — what were you doing just before you sat down to write? What do you do plan to right after you stop writing? When did you last look at your shoes?
  The first question is very easy to answer and works when you feel overwhelmed. The second is good for when you’re feeling aimless and are looking to start planning ahead. The third question is there to surprise your brain into being quiet for a second. It’s best for when things in your head are really noisy and chaotic.
• Place — Describe where you’re writing this, as if you’re writing it in a letter to a friend. Is there anything missing around you? What’s the last national dish that you ate?
  The first prompt is the easiest, and works best when you feel overwhelmed. The second leads to planning ahead – stuff to buy, fix, etc. The third question is there, you guessed it, to take your mind by surprise. If you’re brain is full of screaming demons or chaos monkeys, this may help.
• Media — What did you read/watch/listen to last? What’s the next thing you want to read/watch/listen to? What would your favourite movie look like if it was remade as an opera?
  This is the most fun of the bunch, and the reasoning is the same as in the Time and Place prompts so I won’t repeat it.

Why This Works

First of all, it works for me, it may not work for you — our brains are like that. From my experience the mind tends to follow the initial thread you gave it, so at least for a while you don’t have to stare at a blank page wondering what to write down. The first prompts are very easily answered for that exact reason. None of these prompts are inherently emotionally charged, so you can start writing without first dealing with your emotional state (you can ease into that later, or not). The third prompts are funny and weird (you can pick others like them for yourself), because when things get really bad it’s useful to have them as a distraction. Trust me on that one.

How to Stay Focused on Mind Dumping

If you’re working on planning ahead, then the second question in each prompt category can help you get started, but in many cases that’s not the point of the mind dumping exercise. If that’s the case, keep a notepad or a piece of paper on the side and once something that looks like a task comes into your head, write that down there and not in your journal/morning pages. You can process it once you’re done writing.

How to Stop

Here’s something that’s also not always discussed: you need to go into these kinds of exercises with a hard stop in mind. Set a page limit, a time limit, or better — set both and stop whichever limit you reach first. Your mind is constantly filling up with stuff, and if you don’t put a hard stop you could chase it forever, or tire yourself out with the first session or two and then never come back.

Mind dumping is a useful process that is best done often (daily or weekly). It’s hard to get into the habit if you find it hard to start, if you turn it into a task hunting chore, if you expect the process to be anything other than letting the junk in your brain get onto a page so that you can clear your head. Hopefully the prompts and tips here will help you get into the practice if you want to. If not, you could always just use them as regular journaling prompts. After all, who doesn’t want to see their favourite film remade into an opera?