Your EVERYTHING page is where you do your BRAIN DUMP

The Everything page is your place to capture all of the things that are swirling around in your head that you are working hard not to forget because you need to keep your attention on them—whether that attention is needed today, next week, or sometime further down the road.

Some things will be very specific:

  • Make a hair appointment

  • Set up lunch with Dave

  • Call the dentist

Others may be much less defined:

  • Figure out summer camps

  • Decide on strategy approach

  • Create board proposal

  • Think about vacation plans

Get everything out of your head and onto the page.

Over time, that’s how you learn to trust that it’s there.

You don't need to know exactly what you need to do yet. You don't need to turn every thought into a perfectly worded task. Capture it as it exists in your head right now. The more nebulous items will get refined and made more specific when you move to Step 2: Organize.

3 Things to remember about your EVERYTHING page

1) The order you write things down doesn’t matter

Capture things as they come to mind, whenever they pop into your head.

Getting used to doing this will take some practice. We're so accustomed to organizing our thoughts as we write them down that it can feel strange at first to simply capture them in whatever order they arrive.

But there's a reason for this.

As you get more comfortable with not trying to put everything in logical order, you will actually get better at capturing what needs to get done, rather than trying to figure out what you need to do before you even write it down.

For example, you might write:

Schedule Ashley’s haircut

And as soon as you write that down, you realize,

Wait, before I can to that, I need to

  • check John's soccer schedule and

  • look at David's work schedule

so I can be sure to find a time when

  • someone is available and

  • there's a car for me to use

And then you remember,

Oh, and before I can do ANY of that, I need to ask David if he has updated his schedule yet…

And the next thing you know, you have two things (at least) that need to happen before you can schedule the appointment.

So if you're hoping to keep everything nicely ordered on your Brain Dump/Everything page, you're out of luck!

That's okay.

The goal isn't to create an organized list.

The goal is to get what's in your head onto the page.

2) DON'T start getting things done while you're completing your brain dump.

Unless it's something so simple that it truly takes three seconds or less AND it won't send you down a rabbit hole of distraction, resist the urge to knock a few things out before your list is complete.

This is harder than it sounds.

You write down "make dentist appointment" and think, I could just do that right now.

Then you open the website. You realize you need to find your insurance card. You can't remember where you put it. You search your email. You find the insurance company's website instead. Thirty minutes later, you're doing something completely different.

Sound familiar?

The entire point of the Brain Dump is to get everything out of your head before you start deciding what to do about it.

So, I’ll say it again, Do your Brain Dump first.

Then you can go through and find all those little things you can quickly cross off and put them in your Flash Tasks list on the left side of the page spread.

3) Capture new items as they come up throughout the day here,
but wait to categorize them until you do a full review cycle.

When something new pops into your head, put it on the Everything page. Don't immediately try to figure out where it belongs on your current plan.

Why?

Because otherwise, you can easily fall victim to the shiny object, squeaky wheel, and recency bias of task management.

A new task arrives, and suddenly it feels important simply because it's new, someone just asked for it, or it's making noise.

It's really easy to want to cram that new task into your current priority plans. But when you stop and look at everything together during your review, you may realize that it doesn't actually belong there—or that something else is more important.

The purpose of the Tracker is to help you stay focused on what you decide you want to do, rather than constantly reacting to whatever happens to cross your path.

There are three exceptions to this rule:

  1. It’s a real fire drill
    Something comes up that truly must be dealt with that day. When that happens—and it does!—go ahead and immediately put it into one of the categories on the left side of the page spread.

    But don't skip writing it down altogether. Put it directly into its category.

    That forces you to do a quick sanity check: Is this truly more important than the other things already on this list?

    If it is, great. You have made a conscious decision to adjust your plan. If it isn't, you may have just saved yourself from letting someone else's urgency hijack your day.

  2. It belongs in the WAITING category
    More on this later, in the Organize step, but if there is nothing you need to DO yet because you're waiting for someone else to give you something, make a decision, or get something done, you can put it directly into the WAITING category.

    These items don't need to go through the same decision-making process because you're not deciding whether or when to act on them yet. You're simply making sure you don't have to remember that you're waiting for them.

  3. You’ve pretty much completed all the items you’ve already categorized
    As a busy person, this is rare. But occasionally, it happens!

    If you've already captured everything and all of the items are already represented in one of the categories on the left, go ahead and categorize a new item immediately.