How I do a brain dump (GTD, capture, Apple Notes and TickTick)

I was feeling overwhelmed and my TO DO apps weren’t serving me well so I did a brain dump to get everything out of my head and into a system to bring some calm and planning into my life, something I really need right now.

  1. I took my iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil and created a grided note within Apple notes to give me something to line up my text
  2. I then wrote down areas of focus (health, family, social, recreation, money, house)
  3. Next I created an ‘inbox’ line and proceeded to write everything down that I had in my head
  4. Then I went through the list and put an * next to all of the important ones
  5. Once I had read them all I then had all of my thoughts on ‘paper’

I’ve been playing around with a few apps but settled on TickTick as an app to try out this month, who knows it might stick.

I created tags for my areas of focus and then proceeded to copy my list I made above and  get it all in order. I only have 2 projects (blog and podcasting), everything else is categorised using the tags.

I then went back through and set reminders and repeats E.g. put bins out every Thursday at 3pm.

I also created a smart list to show me anything that I ‘Must do!’ that I mark as High Priority in the app.

That’s everything out of my head, now to get on and do it!

Lee Peterson @LJPUK