If you have ADHD, or a lot of the traits, and your head is full of half-finished things by the end of the day, this piece on the ADHD brain dump is for you. I’m dyslexic, with a lot of ADHD traits, and I’ve never had a formal ADHD diagnosis. I’m also not a doctor.
You write down everything in your head, fast, then go back through it with a pen. The research I could find isn’t about ADHD. The two closest studies are about writing a specific to-do list and making specific plans.
What is an ADHD brain dump?
An ADHD brain dump is a few minutes of writing down everything that’s taking up room in your head. Jobs, worries, ideas, the email you meant to answer on Tuesday. It doesn’t need to be in order or neat. Then you read it back and decide what happens to each line.
There’s nothing medical about it. It’s an ordinary exercise with a name you’ll see a lot online, and the NHS page on ADHD in adults doesn’t use the phrase. That page’s list of signs does include “finding it hard to organise your time” and “finding it hard to follow instructions or finish tasks”.
Does a brain dump help with ADHD?
I couldn’t find a study of brain dumps in people with ADHD. Two studies come close. One is about writing a to-do list, the other about making specific plans.
In a 2018 sleep lab study, 57 healthy adults aged 18 to 30 spent 5 minutes writing before bed. Some wrote a to-do list for the next few days, and the others wrote about things they’d already done. The to-do list group fell asleep significantly faster, and the more specific the list, the faster they fell asleep (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, via PubMed).
A 2011 set of studies found that unfinished goals kept intruding while people tried to do something else. Letting them make specific plans for those goals “eliminated the various activation and interference effects”, and the authors suggest a plan “may also free cognitive resources for other pursuits” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, via PubMed). So in those studies, once people had decided when they’d do something, it stopped nagging them.
Neither study involved people with ADHD, so neither tells you what will happen for you.
The NHS’s Every Mind Matters page on stress says planning ahead for upcoming stressful days or events, including “creating a to-do list”, “can really help to relieve stress”.
How to do an ADHD brain dump
None of this is medical advice. You need a pen and, as a rough guide, 10 or 15 minutes.
1. One sheet of paper and a timer
Paper, the back of an envelope or the notes app on your phone will all do. One sheet is enough. Set a timer for about 5 minutes. That’s only a suggestion; the sleep study used 5 minutes too, but for a to-do list at bedtime.
2. Write everything, badly
Anything in your head goes on the page, from tomorrow’s meeting to the thing in the fridge that needs eating. Don’t tidy it as you go, and don’t fix the spelling. I misspell things constantly.
3. Go back through it with a pen
When the timer goes, read it back. Cross out anything that doesn’t need doing. Most ideas should die. Circle what has to happen today, and write a date next to anything that has one.
4. Make a plan for what’s left
This is the step the 2011 studies point at. For each circled line, write when you’ll do it and the first small step. If it’s big, Every Mind Matters suggests “breaking a task down into easier, more manageable chunks”.
5. Put the dates in your calendar, then bin the sheet
Anything with a date goes on a calendar you actually see. Once the dates are in, bin the sheet.
When to do a brain dump
Any time your head is too full to start anything. The people in the sleep study wrote theirs at bedtime, if you want to try it then.
I close my laptop at 5pm and the work is done, but my brain isn’t. I don’t have a neat answer for this.
The other good time is when you’ve started too many things. Written down side by side, most of them are easy to cross out. If you can, go through the list with someone else. The NHS lists “having help from another person to plan and structure your tasks” as a reasonable adjustment, and I wrote about ADHD at work last week.
When a brain dump won’t help
If you skip steps 3 and 4, you’ve just got a longer list.
It won’t help with everything, either. Losing the thread halfway through something is a different problem, covered in ADHD working memory. And if you want an app for the to-do list that comes out the other end, there’s a short list of apps for ADHD, each described from its own website.
If it’s getting in the way
If you think ADHD is affecting your studies, work or relationships, the NHS says to make an appointment with a GP to find out what support is available. Its page on ADHD in adults is the place to start.
About Ultrathink
I built Ultrathink, for myself and for anyone who saves a lot. It’s a knowledge base for links, notes, files and voice recordings. You throw everything in, fast, and ask for it back in plain English. An AI pass fixes the spelling, writes a short summary and adds tags.
Ultrathink isn’t a medical product and makes no claim about ADHD.
