TL;DR: When your schedule falls apart or you’re drowning in urgent requests, do a brain dump of everything on your mind, then highlight only what’s truly urgent for today (3-5 items). This simple two-step system clears mental overwhelm and helps you focus on what actually matters instead of reacting to everything at once.

Life has a funny way of laughing at our best-laid plans. Even when we’ve time-blocked our week down to the minute, carefully prioritized our tasks, and set ourselves up for success, chaos can still knock on the door.

Why Do Our Best Plans Fall Apart?

As I write, my feverish daughter is watching Vooks and eating her tenth snack downstairs on the couch. My husband is on his third day as a juror and is expected to be out for a fourth day tomorrow, which is normally when he’s on kid duty. My carefully planned week is out the window.

Here’s my immediate temptation: try to cram everything in anyway. Do all the same things I was planning to do. Push through. And then, inevitably, feel like a failure when I can’t actually do all the things I would have done without the disruption.

Am I alone? No? Let’s continue.

What Should You Do When Everything Feels Urgent at Once?

Schedule disruptions aren’t the only culprit. Sometimes you sit down for the day and it feels like everyone huddled up and decided to ask for everything from you all at once. You have a ton of emails. Somebody’s angry. You just got a letter from the IRS. You have three meetings back-to-back. A new client prospect popped into your inbox and you want to make sure to get back to them quickly.

The fire hose won’t stop blasting you with new things that feel urgent, and it can be completely paralyzing.

How Do You Handle Overwhelm in the Moment?

Here’s what I do when I’m feeling overwhelm creeping in:

First, I pause. Just for a moment. Then I grab a piece of paper and write down absolutely everything that’s in my brain. Work, home, doesn’t matter. Could8 be ridiculous. Whatever is in my brain that my brain is telling me I need to do, I write it all down. Just dump it. This can take 5-10 minutes.

Next, I take a highlighter, and I highlight only the things that are truly urgent. By urgent, I mean something bad will happen if it doesn’t get done today. A deadline. A late fee. A missed client opportunity. Will I be screwed if it doesn’t happen today? If not, it doesn’t get highlighted.

I usually end up with a list of 20+ items, 3-5 of which are highlighted. It’s always been possible for me to get those 3-5 things done in that day (if I ignore the other 15 things).

There are always a lot of things I want to do or that my brain is telling me are important. But when I really look at them, they’re not things that will immediately turn into consequences if I don’t get them done today.

Then I can focus on the highlighted things, get those done, and worry about processing everything else later.

Side note: since it’s the future now, you can also press Dictate on Chat GPT and ramble your list into the tool – it can help you do this. Whatever works for you is a good plan!

Why Does the Brain Dump Method Actually Work?

Our brains don’t do a great job of triaging information in the moment. They can’t help us feel the difference between something that’s truly urgent and something that isn’t. Which is why sometimes you’ll be in the middle of a meeting and your brain will ping you with a reminder about something completely random. Not a useful time, brain. Or at 2 a.m. Thanks for that.

We can’t trust our brains to systematically and calmly remind us of the most urgent things in the moment we need them.

Another unhappy truth is that the same task pinging into our attention 5 times FEELS like 5 tasks.

A third unhappy truth is that when you get a true logjam in your brain, the work you do slows down AT BEST. At worst, you’ll be paralyzed altogether. It’s really frustrating to feel like you’re working slower just at the moment when you’re overwhelmed and feel like you need to move faster. Our brains need support to clear the jam so thoughts and work can flow freely again.

Here’s what happens when you get everything on paper: You’re essentially telling your brain, “Hey, this is captured. This is written down. This will get handled at the proper time. You don’t have to keep reminding me.”

Your brain is no longer responsible for trying to hold onto all that information. Now it can focus its attention on just doing the task in front of you. You’ve calmed that panicky little voice in the back of your head that might distract you in the middle of doing something by saying, “But what if there’s something else more important you should be doing right now? What about this? What about this? What about that?”

When everything’s written down in front of you, you can make conscious decisions. Maybe you move some things into next week. Maybe you do a sloppier, faster version of something. Maybe you even decide not to do something at all. But you’re making decisions, not just reacting.

The Bottom Line

All you have to do when you’re feeling that overwhelm-panic feeling is a brain dump in the moment, followed by highlighting what’s truly urgent.

Can you beef up your systems in the long term? Absolutely. A really good project management system is the key to making overwhelm like this much less common. But even with the best project management system, sometimes you need to do this. This simple exercise will get you most of the way there and help you avoid major bad consequences.

Your schedule will go off the rails again. That’s not an if, it’s a when. But now you have a tool to support you when it does.

Frequently Asked Questions

A brain dump typically takes 5-10 minutes. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s just getting everything out of your head and onto paper (or a digital tool) so your brain can stop trying to hold onto all that information at once.

What counts as “truly urgent” when highlighting tasks?

Something is truly urgent if a real consequence will happen if it doesn’t get done today—a missed deadline, a late fee, a lost client opportunity, or a commitment you made that can’t be postponed. If it can wait until tomorrow without negative consequences, it’s not truly urgent.

What if I have more than 5 urgent items after highlighting?

If you end up with more than 5 highlighted items, go back through and ask yourself again: “Will something bad truly happen if this waits until tomorrow?” If you legitimately have more than that, it’s time to negotiate deadlines or ask for help. People are usually much more understanding if you say “I’m about to miss this deadline – can I have more time?” instead of “oops thanks for reminding me – I missed that deadline, didn’t I?”

Can I do a brain dump digitally instead of on paper?

Absolutely! Use whatever method works best for you—a notebook, a digital document, voice dictation into ChatGPT, or even a notes app on your phone. The medium doesn’t matter; what matters is getting everything out of your head and into a format where you can see and prioritize it.

A brain dump is specifically for moments of overwhelm when your brain is spinning and you can’t think straight. Unlike a regular to-do list that you maintain over time, a brain dump is an emergency tool. You capture everything in the moment, then immediately triage to find the 3-5 things that actually need to happen today. It’s about breaking the paralysis, not long-term task management.