Do a braindump and feel relief

I recently joined a readingclub. Yeah, a good ol'fashioned readingclub. Well, online ofcourse. C'mon, I'm not gonna sit in some library or bookstore. Just kidding folks, just kidding. On the Ready4Anything mailinglist you can jump in a new readingsession of David Allen's "other" book: Ready for Anything. This book doesn't describe the GTD process but it tells little stories and anecdotes which relate to GTD. They are short columns (2-3 pages) which The Dave wrote for his online newsletters. The book consists of 52 chapters, so you can read a chapter a week. That is exactly what we do at the mailinglist. We read a chapter and discuss it during the week. We start with chapter two tomorrow so feel free to subscribe and hop aboard!

Anyway, last week I got pointed to an interesting PDF. It is called RAMdump.pdf and it gives you startingpoints for you mental dump. Everything you have on your mind. Big, small, long, short, multi-step, anything, just dump it on paper or on your screen as a part of your collection process. The list is really big I must say but definitely worth to take a look at. I think it is a list you don't need to take a look at every week and I think it has some pointers that might give you new ideas instead of reminding you of hidden, old ideas. But take a look at it and take the points you need to get started with the RAM dump of your brain. From my own experience I do have to say: Do a braindump but make sure you follow it up correctly with the processing and organizing of your open loops. And even better: Weekly Review! Otherwise you keep dumping the same open loops over and over again. Not good for your health and your own time and energy.

Do you have some tips for a good braindump (I love this word...) or collection-techniques? Let us know in the comments!

Have fun!

Wow! The RAM Dump is a little overwhelming – I run shrieking from it – 7 pages of tickler questions! Yikes. Very thorough which is great. I’d have to try it a time or two before I could really feel comfortable with it I guess.\n\nIt just seems like too much work (LOL).
Alex Fayle - 14 09 06 - 12:12

About

This is an article which is part of my weblog "What's the Next Action". It deals with everything GTD and the five phases of projectplanning as written by Dave Allen in his book "Getting Things Done".

The previous article on this blog is called 'Shortcut Sunday #3: MS Outlook'.
The next article on this blog is called 'Some fun on timemanagement'.
You can find all the articles on the frontpage.
You can contact me via email on punkey at gmail dot com.

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