One of the most common questions we hear from new users is the simplest one: what do I actually do with this? Start with the brain dump. About five minutes, and the noise in your head has somewhere else to live.
What a brain dump is
A brain dump is exactly what it sounds like. You take everything currently rattling around in your head (tasks, worries, half-formed ideas, the thing you mustn’t forget, the article you meant to read, the message you owe someone) and you write it all out. In no order. With no tidying.
The point is not to organise. The point is to get it out.
Why it helps
Working memory is for holding things briefly, not for storing them. When you’re keeping a dozen unfinished thoughts live in your head at once, it is exhausting, and it’s where a lot of low-grade, hard-to-name anxiety comes from. Each open loop is using up a little piece of you.
Getting those loops out of your head and onto something outside of it, something you trust to keep them, measurably lightens the load. The thought is safe now. You are allowed to stop holding it.
Capture first
Open jotsum and type. One thing, press enter. Next thing, press enter.
Don’t categorise, don’t tag, don’t stop to decide what’s important. A brain dump is closer to generative, associative thinking. Sorting and tagging is closer to focused executive attention: holding options in working memory while you judge them. Researchers including Scott Barry Kaufman describe these as distinct brain networks that creative thinking moves between; mid-capture organising makes you switch on every line. That switching is tiring, and it is how you lose the thread of what you were trying to get down. We separated capture and organise in jotsum so you are not asked to do both at once.
"When working in small startups I found that no matter what project management tool we started with, the load of organising plans and tasks while gathering the latest status, ideas and goals was too much admin work for a small team to carry. Slowly, in every startup, despite investor demands for OKRs and KPIs, everyone would drift back to simple lists and notes for their updates. In a way it was a natural move, because we would capture first and then find the simplest tool for sorting, organising and prioritising."
— A founder experience
When you’re done, everything you typed is dated and sitting on your timeline, and all of it is findable later. Tagging and sorting can wait until a day you have the capacity, or never.
Whenever your head feels too full, open jotsum and type until the noise is on the page. First thing in the morning, or halfway through an overwhelmed afternoon. Not a one-off setup. Something you can return to whenever you need to put your mind down for a moment.