Stuck in a Writing Rut? Try the Brain Dump
The 15 to 30 minute journaling hack that clears mental fog and unlocks your next great article.
In some crazy world I have not written a brain dump in over one year.
And that world is here!
I miss the brain dump. The 100 ideas. The perfect handwriting. Thank you technology. And thank you to my mind for making all of these crazy and obscure yet congruent connections with my thoughts.
This is the most effective way to really elaborate or develop an idea.
Claude and other AIs, they’re good, real good. I’m proud of them. But to get those ideas that really hit? Hit them with the brain dump.
15 minutes is a good start, 30 minutes is a journey.
You will be so amazed at what you find.
Frankly there are no rules to this game, but there are lessons to follow along.
Why Brain Dumping Unlocks Creativity for Writers
One: you must always be ready to switch the topic. If your brain says switch but your mind says no, still switch because what you are doing is developing your creativity muscles.
By interacting with a bunch of different ideas at once you give your brain the training grounds to create a connection to these, resulting in, well you guessed it, creativity.
Also what is so cool about the brain dump is that you can be typing away, and all of a sudden, you have a brand new article.
This can be especially helpful for writers who feel like they are in a rut, myself included. But the moment that brain dump starts, within the first 5 minutes I already have a new idea and a couple 100 words written out about that topic.
So we got our brain dump, we have jotted down our notes, wrote down some random stuff about pigs flying, and see no clue how this made us better.
The Science: What Happens to Your Brain During a Brain Dump
Let me show you the epic brain workout you just did.
By engaging in a 15-30 minute “brain dump” or journaling session you just:
Dropped cortisol by up to 19-23% after regular practice
Activated your prefrontal cortex while calming your amygdala (reducing fear and stress responses)
Improved working memory by freeing up mental resources that were stuck in rumination
And it was all because of this brain dump.
How Brain Dumps Help Writers Develop Their Voice
The brain dump has changed my life.
It has made me a more aware writer. It has allowed me to develop ideas into my own way of thinking. A lot of the time we are introduced to topics and don’t know how to write about them differently from others, or have trouble expressing what we even know about it. The brain dump helps you flesh that out.
The brain dump also has helped me remember a bunch of random stories in my life.
My weird theory I just thought of is that since I am engaging in this task of offloading all this imagery and story into my mind, my brain waves are becoming more chill, and into the delta or theta state where I can really mess around with my subconscious mind and lead to more stories that have been hidden from my daily consciousness like childhood, or the random times when boom, next thing, you are thinking about the time you took MDMA with your two best friends at your high school prom afterparty in Northern Wisconsin, and you wanted to drive home around 4am because all the kids fell asleep, so you asked the Mom to drive you to the train station!
Legendary day, and that is only the beginning with what you can surface when you try out the brain dump.
So if you’re like me, a fellow writer, researcher of the mind, developer of ideas, a bit too “head in the cloud but I like it there,” or just want to be more creative, less stressed, and see yourself in a birds eye view, try out the brain dump.
How to Start Brain Dumping: A Simple Morning Practice for Substack Writers
Here is how I would get started.
In the morning, before you start your day, lock in 15-30 minutes for yourself.
You can set a timer on your alarm clock. I use brain.fm binaural beats which has a built in alarm clock. So 15-30 minutes depending on how much time you have. If it’s your first time, 15 minutes. If you are going for the fences and deep into the mind, 30 minutes. Sometimes the 15 turns into 30 so it doesn’t matter.
Then open up a blank Google doc, Scrivener, or a piece of paper.
I like typing out the big brain dumps because my hand often gets tired during pencil journaling, but both are incredibly good, and writing with your real hand offers a plethora of benefits as well.
The Brain Dump Writing Process
So during this brain dump you will start what I like to call pounding keys.
Start mashing sentences together like you are a horrible artist that is being forced to make something cool. Most people have no idea what that means and neither did I.
“I don’t know what to say!”
Ok, start the brain dump there. And keep going.
Consistently typing out one word at a time until you have strung together sentences. Eventually you will begin to notice the sentences starting to make sense and maybe a road map being created. Keep going.
Next: if your mind changes to a new topic, a new thought or anything, you must change the topic at hand.
“What if I don’t want to!”
Well, I am a wellness coach and as the wellness coach I am your ally, not your dictator, so I say do what you want. But in order to get maximum benefits from this exercise, we need to switch, and switch often.
Keep going, don’t stop. You are just having fun.
Make sure to take deep slow nasal breaths as they put you in a parasympathetic state, which means the rest and digest part of your nervous system which allows you to go into more calming brain wave states and can help you achieve higher states of intuition, focus, creativity and introspection.
Breathwork Exercise: 4 Seconds in. 2 Seconds hold. 6 seconds out pursing your lips like you are breathing through a straw. 10 reps.
The Results: Less Stress, More Creativity, Better Writing
After all is said and done. And you have pressed the start button. You smashed keys. You learned, you laughed, you loved, you saw the beauty in typing a ton of words, randomly, sporadically, and that is how much you helped yourself today.
You made yourself a better thinker, learner, explorer of life. You had the courage to look within and explore your extraordinary being.
Congrats. I am proud of you.
Brain Dump is a fascinating tool. I am so glad I was taught it from Matthew Dicks. You can find how this journaling exercise was made from one of the best storytellers in the world. He is like the Novak Djokovic of storytelling.
Thank you for reading, you are my best friend. Keep thriving, keep writing, keep becoming the best version of yourself.
Amen.
Jack