I’m pretty into goal prioritizing and task management. Always have been, really. I feel like life is like math to a certain extent. There are several ways to solve a problem, so there isn’t a true ‘right way’, but all ways require some form of structure, step by step actions to get to that elusive X. And if you do some of the steps out of order bad juju happens and you don’t end up where you want to be.

Because of my interest (obsession) with the subject, I had already been exposed to several of the concepts covered in the 30 Day Challenge, which meant some days I didn’t gain as much as what other people most likely did.

Day 7 is like that for me.

Day 7 is where you’re supposed to write down literally everything in your brain. In the system that I base my life structure on, Getting Things Done by David Allen, this is called a brain dump.

The brain is fantastic. Truly it is.

It is also so frustratingly annoying that I wish it had a face to punch sometimes. A face other than my own because that doesn’t sound like fun or very productive…

I mean really… if the brain was any sort of smart it would remind me that I need to get cheese while I am at the grocery store, not when I’m at home cooking my burgers… which may or may not have happened last night…

Thanks, Brain. That is so not helpful…

So the whole idea for the brain dump is to take the responsibility of ‘remembering’ off of the brain. You don’t need to remember a crap ton of stuff if it’s all written down in a place you can refer back to. Your brain becomes free to problem solve because all of its energy isn’t going into a task that it’s actually pretty terrible at.

A full, complete, honest brain dump can take hours, sometimes a few days depending on your life. A single 26 year old female teacher has different priorities, projects, and obligations than 50 year old male business owner with kids and a wife. At least I hope we would…

Maybe I should add something about nail polish to my list just for good measure…

The GTD brain dump list
may be viewed here.

You’re supposed to go through every single area of your life and write down every possible thing you can think of. Things you are in the middle of doing, things you want to do, things you’re waiting for. All of the things, no prisoners. Writing them down (or using whatever system you want to) is like sending the idea to the executioner’s block.

“You shall no longer be in my head.” Chop.

And with the stroke of my pencil the burden and pressure of having to remember anything is gone. From the trivial reminder of Reply to Vimeo Email to the distant goal of Travel To Japan. It all gets transitioned into the physical form of words on paper for me.

I have done brain dumps several times, but none have ever been as intense as the first one. The preceding brain dumps were more like spring cleaning. Yeah there might have been a lot. But it wasn’t as much of an overhaul as that first time.

So with Day 7, I already have the foundation the brain dump is supposed to help establish. I use it as a chance to ‘spring clean’ and update my OmniFocus to what may be a better structure. Better organization.

All of this was actually supposed to happen yesterday, but with all of the frustration going on, I wasn’t in the headspace to deal with life goals and soul searching. So it’s a day late, and I still need to go through OmniFocus, but I have completed the brain dumping portion of the task.

It’s odd how much lighter and clearer your mind can feel after this process. I’m not even done and already I feel like there is more space in my head. More opportunity. More potential.

I have been meaning to upgrade my OmniFocus from the standard edition to the professional edition. Some of the features I used in OmniFocus 1 are not available in the standard edition of OmniFocus 2, which has led to me being a bit more slack in my use of it. I liked having my different perspectives, and without them the program doesn’t fit into my system as well as I want it to.

Well, if I’m going to be serious about getting back on track and staying on top of myself then I feel like now is as good a time as any to invest in the update.

That will be my main task for today. Getting OmniFocus updated and up to speed with my life so I can go back to being my lean, mean, task destroying machine self.

Away I go. /whoosh