Brain Dumps

Following what we've chatted about in Restrictions, I thought it would be good to talk about brain dumps.

Ideas come when you least expect it; in my case, usually in the shower or during my commute to work. I always thought the best I could do was to send an email to myself with that idea, but over time I found that emails were getting lost in the noise of th inbox craziness, or busy schedules diverted my taking an action on that email.

Then I began carrying a small notebook and pen, and, in trying to find a good way to deal with this, I would make sure this notebook would be everywhere with me. Yeah… I don’t like carrying too much with me, so it began to annoy me very fast.

I began to ask myself: what is the one thing I carry every day that I can use here? The answer was obvious - my phone. So, the notes app in iOS held my ideas and brain dumps for a while. But that was not perfect. I had to navigate to each brain dump, as I was keeping them in separate notes. Then, I began collecting all in one note, but then it grew to a very unmanageable note. Searching helped with this, but still...

I sat down and began to think about what I needed, and the restrictions I wanted. The end list was very simple, and short.

• A Simple UI, without any folders or tags, and the ability to quickly add a brain dump
• A quick way to search the brain dumps
• A way to share braindumps

That’s it.

I searched, and found several options. Some paid, some free. I tried a few, but I realized I already had the solution in the form of my friend’s jot app. The same person that wrote Auer Notes also wrote Auer Jots.

Simple, light, and easy.

I’ve been using it as my main brain dump app for over a year, and it has been great.

Remember, simple things hold the key, and in this case, the brain dumps. Wherever I am, I can just quickly dump the idea or thought and get to it.