Clear mental clutter by transferring all thoughts, tasks, and ideas onto paper or screen, creating space for focused work.
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Does your mind feel like a browser with too many tabs open? Each thought, task, or idea fights for your attention, slowing you down and making it hard to focus. When mental clutter builds up, even small decisions can feel overwhelming.
The solution isn’t to push through or hope things magically clear up it’s to hit the reset button with a brain dump. A brain dump is the process of unloading everything onto paper or into a structured system. A brain dump declutters your mind, helps to regain focus, and creates a clear path forward.
In this chapter, I'll guide you through a step-by-step brain dump process. We’ll start with your objectives and key results (OKRs), move down to your roles, projects, and tasks, and end with a backlog for future ideas. This exercise creates the foundation for a well-organised task management system in later chapters.
Braindumps matter because human working memory is severely limited we can typically hold only 4-7 items at once yet we try to mentally juggle dozens of commitments, ideas, and concerns simultaneously. This constant cognitive load drains mental energy, impairs decision-making, and creates persistent low-level anxiety as your brain repeatedly reminds you of unfinished business. By conducting regular braindumps (weekly or when feeling overwhelmed), you free up cognitive bandwidth for deep, creative work. Research shows that unfinished tasks create intrusive thoughts (the Zeigarnik effect), but simply writing them down reduces this mental interference even before you complete them. For growth marketers managing campaigns across multiple channels whilst responding to stakeholder requests, braindumps prevent important tasks from slipping through the cracks. The technique is particularly valuable before strategic thinking sessions, as it clears mental clutter that would otherwise interrupt your focus. Regular practitioners report reduced stress, improved sleep, and enhanced ability to concentrate on high-value work.
To make your brain dump effective, eliminate interruptions both physical and digital:
You’ll need somewhere to capture your thoughts. A spreadsheet works best because it allows for easy organisation and categorisation later. If you’ve purchased the Master Your Workweek course, use the provided brain dump template (find it below the lesson in the description) for a faster, structured approach.
If you suffer from perfectionism like me, setting a timer for 25 minutes helps. Use this time to unload your thoughts without worrying about organisation or perfection. Once the timer starts, let your ideas flow freely we’ll organise them later.
Start at the highest level by writing down your objectives and their corresponding key results. This ensures your brain dump is aligned with your top priorities.
Now, map out the projects that will help you achieve your key results. These are the bigger initiatives or deliverables required to meet your goals.
For every project, identify one clear, actionable step you can take to move it forward. This ensures that each project is actionable and not just an idea.
Identify the roles you fulfil in your professional and personal life, along with the recurring responsibilities tied to each role.
Recurring tasks are the repeatable actions that support your roles and responsibilities. These might include weekly reports, monthly updates, or personal routines.
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Capture any projects that don’t align directly with your OKRs or roles. These might reveal hidden priorities or unnecessary work.
Standalone tasks are one-off actions that don’t belong to a larger project but still need to get done.
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Finally, capture all your long-term ideas, someday/maybe projects, or creative thoughts in the tasks list.
Congratulations! You’ve created a comprehensive overview of your workload, broken into OKRs, roles, projects, tasks, and a backlog.
Studies show that writing things down has a powerful effect on mental clarity. In the 1960s, psychotherapist Ira Progoff introduced the intensive journaling method as a way to explore thoughts, uncover patterns, and gain personal insight. Later, in the 1980s, psychologist James Pennebaker discovered that expressive writing - which he called writing therapy - could reduce stress and improve mental and physical health. The act of putting thoughts on paper isn’t just therapeutic it’s transformative.
Then came David Allen in the early 2000s with his book Getting Things Done. He introduced the “Mind Sweep” as the first step in his productivity system. The idea is simple: your brain isn’t built to store endless lists of tasks, worries, and ideas. It’s built to process information. When you externalise what’s in your head, you free up mental space to think clearly and take action. This system made the concept mainstream, especially for professionals juggling overwhelming workloads.
But we’re in a digital age now. Tiago Forte took things further with his Building a Second Brain framework. He focuses on using digital tools to create an external system for storing and organising thoughts, tasks, and ideas. The principle, though, remains the same: get everything out of your head. Once it’s out, you can see the big picture, prioritise, and act with intention.
At its core, the brain dump is the first step. It’s about clearing the mental clutter so you can organise and make sense of it all. Whether you prefer paper or digital tools, the goal is always the same: free your mind, gain clarity, and create space for what truly matters.
The cockpit that sits above your four growth engines. Individual teams can excel at their own metrics, but without orchestration they're musicians playing different songs. This is where everything comes together and where improvements in one engine amplify gains in another.
The wrong tools create friction. The right ones multiply your output without adding complexity. These are the tools I recommend for growth teams that move fast.
Small improvements multiply. A 10% gain across twelve metrics doesn't add up to 120% - it compounds to 3x growth. This is the mathematical engine behind systematic growth.
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Four decisions that shape everything else. When growth feels harder than it should, the problem is usually here. Get these right and execution becomes much easier.
Without rhythm, effort becomes scattered and progress invisible. A consistent operating cadence keeps your team aligned and your growth system continuously improving.
David Allen
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Capture, clarify and review without friction. Keep projects moving with weekly reviews and clear next actions.
Tiago Forte
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How to store research, briefs and ideas so you can reuse them later. A calm framework for notes that supports experiments and content.
Your system for tracking work determines how your team operates. The right tool makes priorities visible and keeps everyone moving without endless status updates.
Create a trusted task system so you never forget anything. Always know what to work on next with capture, prioritisation, and timeboxing.
Track predictable monthly subscription revenue to monitor short-term growth trends and make faster decisions than waiting for annual revenue reports.
Measure the month-over-month growth in qualified leads to predict future revenue and catch pipeline problems before they impact revenue three months later.
Identify and leverage limitations as forcing functions that drive creative problem-solving and strategic focus.
Enable tools to exchange data programmatically so you can build custom integrations and automate processes that vendor-built integrations don't support.
Systematically rank projects and opportunities using objective frameworks, ensuring scarce resources flow to highest-impact work.
Track predictable yearly revenue from subscriptions to measure business scale and growth trajectory in B2B SaaS and recurring revenue models.
Group customers by acquisition period to compare behaviour patterns and identify which acquisition channels and time periods produce the best long-term value.
Track your user journey through Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue to identify which stage constrains growth most.
Define pipeline progression steps to standardise how reps advance opportunities and give managers visibility into where deals stall or convert unexpectedly.
Focus resources on high-impact business mechanisms where small improvements generate disproportionate results across the entire customer journey.
Track how fast your pipeline of ready-to-buy leads grows to forecast sales capacity needs and spot when lead quality or sales efficiency changes.
Win customers through direct sales conversations where reps guide prospects from discovery to close with personalised solutions and relationship building.
Identify the fundamental factors that directly cause business expansion, concentrating resources on activities that generate measurable results.
Deploy fast, low-cost experiments to discover scalable acquisition and retention tactics, learning through iteration rather than big bets.
Set ambitious goals and measurable outcomes that cascade through your organisation, creating alignment and accountability for strategic priorities.
Block extended time for cognitively demanding tasks requiring sustained focus, maximising valuable output whilst minimising shallow distractions.
Define events that start automation workflows so the right message reaches people at the right moment based on their actual behaviour not arbitrary timing.
Calculate how much pipeline you need relative to quota to ensure you generate enough opportunities to hit revenue targets despite normal conversion rates.
Track campaign performance precisely by appending parameters to URLs that identify traffic sources, mediums, and campaigns in your analytics.
Achieve the state where your product solves a genuine, urgent problem for a defined market that's willing to pay and actively pulling your solution in.