MoNote
How to do a brain dump by voice
A brain dump is everything in your head, put somewhere outside it. Saying it is faster than typing it, and you stop filtering sooner.
Why say it instead of typing it
People speak at around 150 words a minute and type on a phone at around 40. That gap matters more than it sounds. A brain dump is a race between getting a thought down and losing it to the next one, and at typing speed the next one usually wins.
Typing also invites editing. You see the sentence, you fix the sentence, and now you are writing rather than emptying. Speaking gives you nothing to look at, so you keep going.
The method, in five minutes
1. Pick a moment when the noise is loudest. The end of the working day and the last ten minutes before sleep are the two that work for most people. A walk works too.
2. Press record and start with the thing that is bothering you most. Not the most important thing; the loudest one. Importance is a judgement, and judging is what you are trying to stop doing.
3. Do not organise. Jump between work, the dentist, the thing you said to your sister. One breath can hold three unrelated things. That is the point of doing it.
4. When you run dry, wait ten seconds. There is nearly always one more, and it is often the one that mattered.
5. Stop. Five minutes is enough. A brain dump that takes half an hour becomes a task you avoid.
What to do with it afterwards
This is where most brain dumps die. A five-minute recording is a five-minute recording: to find the one thing in it you have to listen to all of it, so you never do.
It needs three things done to it. It has to become text, so it can be searched. It has to be split, so the dentist is not filed with the work problem. And anything with a date on it has to be pulled out, or the brain dump has only moved the thing you will forget from your head to your phone.
You can do this by hand: listen back the next morning and write three lists — things to do, things to decide, things that were only noise. It takes about ten minutes and it works.
Doing it with MoNote
MoNote does the afterwards part. You talk for up to five minutes; it transcribes what you said, splits the recording into separate notes where the subject changes, files each by topic, and lists anything you said you had to do or turn up for.
It does not rewrite you. The notes are your words, and the recording is kept, so any note can be played back as you said it.
Questions
How long should a brain dump take?
Five minutes is enough for most people. The aim is to empty your head, not to cover everything, and a short one you do every day beats a long one you put off.
Is a brain dump the same as journaling?
No. Journaling is reflective and usually about one thing. A brain dump is unsorted on purpose: tasks, worries and half-thoughts together, to be sorted afterwards.
What if I feel awkward talking to my phone?
Most people do, for about a week. Hold it to your ear as if you were on a call; nobody looks twice at somebody talking on the phone.
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