Everything feels urgent
ADHD Brain Dump and Task Triage: What Happens After the List?
By Calmstatic · Updated
A brain dump gets the noise out of your head. Triage is what makes it useful. Sort every item into one of four piles, then choose a single next action from the smallest pile.
Step one: dump without sorting
Write everything down in any order, for five to ten minutes. Don't rank it yet. Sorting while you're dumping slows you down and lets things slip back into your head.
taxes · dentist · return the jacket · email Sam about Saturday · clean out the car
renew passport · birthday gift for Mom · fix the leaky tap · learn Spanish
team slides for Thursday · cancel the unused app subscription · plan the holiday party
Step two: sort into four piles
- Now — has a deadline this week or real consequences: team slides for Thursday, email Sam about Saturday, cancel the subscription before it renews.
- Soon — matters this month: dentist, birthday gift, return the jacket, renew passport.
- Someday — would be nice, no deadline: learn Spanish, clean out the car.
- Not mine — belongs to someone else, or can be handed off: plan the holiday party (ask the office manager), fix the tap (landlord).
Step three: one concrete next action
From the Now pile, choose the item with the smallest first step, and write that step down in words specific enough to start without thinking.
Not “do the slides,” but “open last quarter's deck and duplicate it.” Not “email Sam,” but “reply to Sam's thread with ‘Saturday at 2 works.’”
What to do with the rest
Leave Soon and Someday on the page. You don't need to schedule them today. The Not mine pile needs one message each, and then it's no longer your job.
The Starter Kit includes brain-dump and triage pages built around this kind of sort, so the list has somewhere to live after you've written it.