055: Feeling Overwhelmed? Start Here: My 10-Minute CEO Brain Dump

Feeling overwhelmed doesn't always mean you have too much to do.

Sometimes it means you're trying to keep too much in your head.

In this Sustainable Success Tuesday episode, Fredricka Davis shares the first step in the weekly planning system she has used for years to reduce mental clutter, improve focus, and make better decisions-her simple 10-minute CEO Brain Dump.

This isn't about buying another planner or downloading another productivity app. It's about giving your brain permission to stop trying to remember everything so you can think more clearly and lead more intentionally.

Fredricka explains why successful planning doesn't begin with prioritizing your to-do list. It begins by clearing your mind.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why mental clutter creates overwhelm
• The difference between storing information and thinking clearly
• How to do a simple CEO Brain Dump using nothing more than a legal pad
• Why separating business and personal tasks creates greater clarity
• A simple trick for organizing errands that can save time throughout your week
• Why attention management is often more important than time management
• How clearing your mind helps you become more intentional instead of reactive

This episode is the first in a Sustainable Success series, where Fredricka will take you behind the scenes of the practical systems she uses to organize her business and life without burning out.

Reflection Question

What are you still carrying in your head that would be better served on paper?

This Week's Sustainable Success Challenge

Set aside just 10 uninterrupted minutes this week and complete your own CEO Brain Dump.

Take a legal pad or notebook and draw a line down the center of the page.

On one side, write down every business task, idea, project, phone call, and reminder that's occupying your mind.

On the other side, list everything personal, from appointments and errands to household tasks and family responsibilities.

Don't organize it.

Don't prioritize it.

Don't edit it.

Simply get it out of your head.

Next week, you'll learn how to turn that brain dump into a focused action plan by identifying the three priorities that deserve your attention first.

Learn more about Fredricka's coaching, speaking, programs, upcoming events, and join the free Limitless Living community at FrederickaDavis.com.

Be rooted. Be resilient. And be limitless.

Grab Your Free Reset Guide and more at www.fredrickadavis.com

Continue the conversation inside the here: Limitless Living community.

If this episode resonated with you, you can also send Fredricka a message through the Fan Mail link in the show notes. Your questions may be featured in a future episode.

And if you know someone who needs to hear this conversation, please share the episode with them.

Your reviews mean the world to Fredricka and help other women discover the show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Welcome back to Sustainable Success Tuesday. I'm Frederica Davis, creator of the Limitless Reset Method. Every Tuesday, we focus on one practical framework, one simple system or one strategy you can begin using right away to build a business and a life that is successful without you burning out. Now, today I want to start a little series with you. Over the next several weeks, I'm going to take you behind the scenes and show you some of the simple systems that I personally use to stay organized, focused, and moving forward. Now, let me say something before we dive in here. Now, I am not naturally organized. I know people sometimes assume that I am because I own multiple businesses and have a podcast, coach clients, create programs, teach workshops, retreats, and have a brick and mortar business. And somehow I seem to keep all of those plates spinning in the air all at the same time. But here is the truth. My brain is just busy. It's really busy. Some might probably be out there thinking, oh, she must have ADD or ADHD. Who knows? Maybe I do, maybe I don't, but I'm not about labels. So we'll keep moving on. I'm just really busy. I have ideas constantly. I'm researching something. I'm creating something. I'm thinking about another program, remembering I need to call someone, realizing I forgot something at the office, or thinking about my daughter and how I can make her life better and how we can stay connected as she becomes this amazing adult and all the things that go through my mind. Or I'm planning my next retreat and then another idea shows up. And if I let all of that stay in my head all the time, just like you, I become overwhelmed. Genuinely, I become overwhelmed. Not because I have too much necessarily to do, although you might be thinking from all of that that, whoa, she has way too much to do. But because I'm trying to remember to do too much, it's really the trying to remember it all that gives us that sense of overwhelm. I've learned this over the years with my brain, working with so many of my clients, especially entrepreneurs, our brains are designed to create ideas. Now, some of us are more creative than others, absolutely, but it was never, ever, ever designed to remember them all and store them all at the same time. So the more you start trying to keep track of things and remember what you have to do tonight, what you have to do tomorrow morning, what you have to do by the end of the week, all of these things, the less mental space you have to be available to make the decisions you need to make and to think clearly. So I know you might be listening to this, and like so many of the women I talk to, you may have moments where you feel like you have a serious brain fog. Now, yeah, sometimes that can be hormones, it can be lack of sleep, it can be this, it can be that, it can be a lot of things. But this is one of the things that can be a massive, massive cause of brain fog. The mere fact that we're doing so many things so fast all the time, and we're trying to keep track of them in our heads. So, and I know you might be making sticky notes and little lists here and there. There's more to this. Stick with me. Before I plan my week, before I prioritize, before I decide what I'm working on, I do something incredibly simple. I get absolutely everything out of my head. Now I call this a CEO brain dump. Now, before you picture some fancy software expensive planning system that you need, no, no, no, you don't. Mine starts with an ordinary legal pad. I've done this for years. I call it the CEO brain dump. I dump everything onto a legal pad. And that's it. Sometimes I use the legal pad, sometimes I use a notebook. Honestly, most weeks it's still a yellow legal pad because simple works. Simple is the keys. I draw a line down the middle of the page. On the left side of that line, I put everything business, everything ideas, every project I'm working on, every phone call I can think of, every email, every person I need to follow up with, every random thought. Nothing is too small. Nothing has to be organized. It simply comes out of my head. So when you do this, you are releasing things from your brain and you know where they are. So you don't have to hold on to them and you're making space. You're increasing your capacity. And then I move to the right side of the paper: the notebook, the legal pad, whatever's going to work for you. That's where I put everything personal, whether it's appointments, groceries, things for the house, something for my husband, uh, my daughter, whatever she needs, the dog, the cat, the car, the birthday card I keep forgetting to mail, whatever it is, it goes on the right side of the paper, the right side of that page. Here's the important thing to think about. And I want you to not judge this list. Do not organize this list. Do not prioritize yet on this list. Don't ask whether it's important or not, even if it's the tiniest little thing. Just get it out of your head. I often put on there, take a shower, do my hair, because I don't do my hair every single day. If I do my own nails, I put on there to paint my nails. Okay, it's the littlest things. Take the trash and the recycles out if that's something I need to do, or my husband's going to do it, then I don't have to worry about that on my list. But you get the picture. Put it all down because the more you get out of your head, the more you dump this, and the more you take a pen and put it to paper, the more releasing it is, and the more capacity it creates, the more freedom in your brain and creativity, and you are able to make better decisions, quicker decisions, and some of your brain fog, if not all of it, will start to get better. I simply empty my mind because the goal isn't to create a perfect list. The goal is to stop carrying everything mentally. Now, once everything is on paper, I do one more thing. I take a pen and I circle anything that requires me to leave the office or leave the house, such as errands, returns, or appointments I have out of the house or stopping at the bank or picking something up, anything that's outside my normal workspaces. Why do I do this? I do this because later in the week, I can batch those things together instead of making six separate trips. And when I go to look at my list, I'll visually be able to pick them out very quickly to batch my route, and I'll be much more efficient. Very simple. Now, this will make you not only more productive, it'll reduce your stress, save you money because you're not running around and saying, oh, I forgot this and going back out and running out. It just makes everything run much smoother. Now, that one little habit alone has probably saved me hundreds of hours over the years and dollars and gas and energy and time and all of it. Now, you might have noticed that I did not tell you how I prioritize the list. That's intentional because that's actually going to be next week's episode. I want today to be merely a clearing your mind day, learning how to brain dump and make room. You cannot prioritize clutter. You first have to see everything. Research consistently shows that writing things down reduces the mental load of trying to remember all of your unfinished tasks. I want to stress when you start doing this, it's been shown that this is the most effective when you write them down on real paper. Not in your phone, not in your tablet, not on your computer, but real paper. There is the connection between your brain and your tactile sense of actually writing it down, your visual, you're bringing in more senses by doing this. And it is actually even better. So I encourage you to do it the good old-fashioned way. Now, you cannot prioritize clutter. You first have to see everything. And to reiterate, prioritizing clutter is really just a futile spinning of your wheels. You really do need to see everything first. And research has confirmed that. And it will reduce the mental load exponentially. And most of my clients describe this as a feeling afterwards like they can finally breathe. I think that's exactly the best way to put it. You can finally breathe because when everything is floating around in your head, everything that's unfinished, all those tasks, they feel equally urgent. Once it gets onto paper, though, your brain finally has permission to stop holding on to it. Something interesting happens then. You stop reacting to things so much. You start leading instead of reacting. You stop feeling like you're behind and you begin to make decisions and actually close loops and get things done. That's a completely different way of you operating. Now you're operating more of the CEO of your life. So whether you own a business or not, whether you work for someone else or not, we are all really the CEOs of our lives, of ourselves and our businesses if you have one. This gets you into operating like that, designing, creating, and functioning at a higher level, like a CEO would. Here's something else I've also noticed. Most people don't actually need better time management. They need better attention management. Now, attention, that only comes after clarity. And you cannot focus on what matters most when 50 unfinished thoughts are all competing for your attention at the same time. So before you buy another planner, before you download another app to be more productive, or convince yourself that you need a better system or a new organization board online or any of those things, just try this simple, free process. Spend 10 minutes, grab a legal pattern, a notebook, draw one line down the middle, business on the left, personal on the right. That's it, right? Until there's nothing left in your head. If you need two or three pages, do it. Don't organize it. Don't edit it. Don't prioritize it. Just empty your mind. Do this for the week, if you can, because this frees up so much mental space and it will continue to do so for that whole week. Now, if you want to do this every night, you can. If you want to do this every, you know, twice a week, you can to regroup. But I suggest that you just start out with once a week. You might be surprised at exactly how much lighter you feel mentally and physically even. But again, just empty your mind. 10 uninterrupted minutes sometime this week. Do your own CEO brain dump, and that is it. Don't worry about what comes next. We'll cover that next Tuesday because next week I'm going to show you how I take this page that looks completely overwhelming and narrow it down to the three things that actually deserve your attention first. That one shift completely changed the way I work. If this episode helped you, I'd love to hear from you. Please review the show. Send us your feedback. I would love to know what else you would love me to talk about. Come find me on Facebook and tell me one thing that surprised you when you got everything out of your head and onto paper. And you can learn more about my coaching, speaking, programs, events, and so on. Join our free community at fredericadavis.com. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with me. Thursday, we're going to talk about being the CEO of your personal wellness. So until next time, be rooted, be resilient, and be limitless.