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Diana Rene: 0:00

Welcome to another episode of the Decluttered Mom podcast. Today we are actually going to replay an oldie but a goodie, and the reason I want to replay this is because it's all about the power of a brain release, which holidays tend to drive overwhelm right, which we've talked about on previous episodes regarding holidays, but I think that the brain release is something that can dramatically reduce that overwhelm. It can reduce the stress level that you're feeling as you're trying to remember costumes and class parties and gifts and all of the things, all of the things. And so this episode is going to teach you how I do a brain release and how it's a little bit different than what a lot of other people would teach you about, and it's something that's really been helpful for me and it's been helpful for the members of my program, and it's just something that will help you get everything out of your brain and organized in a way that will actually help you, instead of just brain dumping onto a sheet of paper and then it's just sitting on the sheet of paper instead of in your head, but it's still stressing you out because now you see all the stuff you have to get done right. So, without further ado, let's play the power of a brain release.

Diana Rene: 1:34

You're listening to the Decluttered Mom podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, Diana Rene, and in 2017, I had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home. Okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me. Over the next 10 months, I got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show.

Diana Rene: 2:10

In this episode, I want to talk about the power of a brain release, and if you've been around me for any period of time, you know that I talk about this quite often because of how powerful it is in my life and in the lives of women who I've worked with. But essentially, it's a brain dump. I just hate. I hate that term. It just is one of those things where it's like. It just like gets under my skin. I don't like it. I don't like the way it sounds, and so I call it a brain release. However, it also has a couple of extra steps than like what you consider a brain dump, where you just get everything on the paper and then it is what it is with a brain release we are getting it on paper, but then we are also doing something with it.

Diana Rene: 2:59

So what I want to do is kind of walk you through a brain release, but first I want to talk about why, like, why is this important? And the thing is is that anyone has a lot on their plate, but especially busy moms have so much on their plate All of these things that they're trying to remember, not only for themselves, but for their family, for their kids, for their spouse, for the kids' school, for activities, for their own work if they work outside of the home, for any extracurricular activities that you're involved in. Oftentimes you're in charge of a lot of things with vacations and groceries and just all the things right, and when that happens we tend to get overwhelmed, and the brain release is one tool that can drastically reduce that overwhelm simply by utilizing it. So that is why the brain release is so important in my mind, because it immediately lifts some of that burden of oh shoot, I'm gonna forget this, or oh shoot, I did forget this. Um, we are just kind of working through the the chaos in our mind and getting it on paper and scheduling things out and making sure that nothing is being left behind. You know what needs to be done this week and you know when it's going to get done and you know that you're not going to forget anything. And there's a really big like burden that's lifted when we know that, when we know that for a fact. So that is why a brain release is so important.

Diana Rene: 4:46

I do a brain release every single Sunday and then, as needed. So, like every Sunday, typically in the afternoon or early evening, I'll sit down and I will do a brain release. But then there are other times throughout the week where I will just do one because I'm feeling overwhelmed or because I'm feeling like I'm forgetting something, or because it just feels like a lot has happened since Sunday that needs to get put on there. So the rule is always to do on Sunday, but then just do it throughout the week as needed. I just like doing it in my planner because then I can contain it easier and I know exactly where it is. If you just want to put it on a note card, on a piece of printer paper, on the back of a receipt. I don't really care, as long as you just do it, because I think it's really going to help you.

Diana Rene: 5:32

So let's get into the how. So what you're going to do when you're doing a brain release is you are going to sit down and empty your brain, empty your mind. You are not going to judge your thoughts as they come up, you are just going to get it on paper. So if it comes to your mind while you're sitting there and you're thinking about your brain release, write it down. So you're gonna write down things that you need to get done, or things that need your attention, or projects that you wanna work on, or forms that need to be turned in, or bills that need to be turned in, or bills that need to be paid. All of the above, everything that you can think of is going to go on your brain release.

Diana Rene: 6:12

And if that's hard for you to sit down and just start thinking of things, then there are some prompts that you can think through. You can think of okay, for kid number one, school, like, just focus on one child in their school. Oh yeah, I need to turn in that field trip form and I also need to email their teacher because I wanted to ask this question school and go through all of that and then go back to kid number one activities or kid number one birthday coming up or whatever. But you can start to think through each individual person in your household and then think through their daily life. So, whether that be school activities, their friendships, their uh, organizations that they're a part of, like just anything with that person to help kind of spark your, your brain, to get going. And once you get going, then you're not going to need to do that very long, you're not going to have to give yourself prompts, but you just want to get everything on paper. If you do work outside of the home, then I recommend doing a separate, like personal slash family and then a work one, because I think it's hard to differentiate between the two when you're going further down this process. So I always recommend doing it separate. But if you do not work out of the home, then you can just do it all in one list After you get everything down, every possible thing that you can think of that you need to get down.

Diana Rene: 7:46

And it doesn't matter when you need to do it. It could be something that you have to get done today, or it could be something that you have to, that you want to get done before Christmas. That's six months away, it doesn't matter. Just put it down if it's in your mind, because the more we can get out of our brain, the better we're going to feel and the more thorough and complete we're going to feel. And then we're not going to be, we're not going to be left with that burden of trying to think and not forget.

Diana Rene: 8:17

So, once we have everything down, we're going to go through three things we're going to delegate, we're going to delete and we're going to potentially automate. Delegate, we're going to delete and we're going to potentially automate. So first, we're going to delegate, and what I mean by that is I want you to find at least one thing on your brain release that you can hand off. Whether that's to a family member, whether that's to hiring someone, whether that's to swapping something with a neighbor or a friend, it doesn't really matter, but just finding a way to get something off of your plate, because I think this is something that we always have to work on as moms. We want to do it all and we feel like we have to do it all, and we're told that we have to do it all, and so when we can start growing or exercising that delegate bone in our body, then we are going to be better off for it.

Diana Rene: 9:15

So find one thing that you can delegate, that you can get off your plate, that somebody else in your world can handle for you, that you don't need to be in charge of. The next one is to delete. So again, and I want you to find at least one thing and when I say find at least one thing for both the delegate and delete, I don't mean you have to stop there. I just want you to do at least one, to kind of like, push yourself a little bit. If you're like, oh, no, no, no, no, I don't need help, I can do all this. Push yourself and do at least one. But if you can do more, great.

Diana Rene: 9:50

But delete is just getting rid of things that don't need to be done. So oftentimes we will be thinking about something that we think we need to do because we want to do it for somebody else, or we want to someone else to think of us, or we feel like we have to do all of these extracurriculars for your kid's school because you see all the other moms doing it, or whatever it may be find at least one thing that you can delete off of your to-do list, off of your brain release, no matter how big or small it is. Again, we're just kind of working on exercising that muscle and getting rid of at least one thing and then automate. So is there anything on your brain release that you can somehow automate? And this isn't always the case. So I don't say you have to do at least one, but is there a bill that you have to pay that you can get put on auto pay, or is there something that you can just figure out a way to make it a non-task for you? It's something that's automatically done for you. Is there anything on the list that you can automate?

Diana Rene: 11:03

So, after we go through those steps, what we're going to do is now we are going to prioritize every single thing on the list, and you could have 10 things on your list or you could have 55 things on your list, it doesn't matter, but we're going to go through them and we are going to either put a number one, a number two or a number three by each one. Another thing you could do is you could use highlighters. So this is. Again, this is going to be a personal preference thing, but if you want to just go through them and number them, great. If you want to use highlighters and all number ones get blue, all number twos get pink and all number threes get green, great, it doesn't really matter. But whatever works best for you, I like to do both. Um, cause I don't know why, but I like to uh highlight them first and then I go back through and I put the numbers next to them. So you could do that too, but you don't have to. It's kind of an either or uh thing. So this is what we're looking for for number one, number two and number three. This is how they're going to be different.

Diana Rene: 12:09

Okay, so a number one item is something that is urgent and has a consequence if it doesn't get done. What I mean by that? We all know what urgent means. First of all, right, like this is something that has to get done quickly. It's not something that can wait. This isn't like something that we can put off until next month. This is something that we have to get done and it's something that we're probably thinking about, and it's bothering us that we haven't gotten it done yet. This is an urgent task, but then when I say it has a consequence, is an example of a consequence could be this is a bill that is due in two days and if it's not paid then I'm going to get a big late penalty fee. Or this is a field trip form that I have to turn in for my daughter and if I don't turn it in by Wednesday she doesn't get to go on the field trip. So there's some type of consequence, and a consequence isn't necessarily like this big, bad, scary thing. It's just if you don't get this task done, something is either going to happen or not happen as a result of your inaction on this task.

Diana Rene: 13:18

Okay, so that's a number one task. It needs to be urgent and have a consequence if it's not done and have a consequence if it's not done. A number two is going to be semi-urgent to urgent, but it's not going to have really a consequence. So this might be something that you would really like to get done quickly. Maybe a holiday is coming up and you really want. You really really want to get like certain types of decorations for like a part of your home that every year you say you're going to decorate and you don't. So this is like feels urgent to you, it's something you want to do, but like there's not necessarily like a really big consequence if you don't do it. So that's kind of a number two. It's also a number two could be something that's just semi-urgent, so it's something that you know needs to get done soon, but doesn't necessarily need to get done, like in the next couple of days or even this week. And then a number three is simply just not urgent. It's not something that needs to get done by any means in the next week, maybe not even the next month. It's something that you would like to do or you know needs to get done at some point, but you don't have to do it right away, and so we're just going to make it a number three.

Diana Rene: 14:34

So now that we have everything on our list categorized as a one, two or three, we are going to schedule and what we're going to do is we're going to look at our next week. So again, this is as if we were on a Sunday, which is when I typically do this. But if you're doing it at a different point in the week, then you're still just going to look at the week that you're in, but on Sundays I look to the week ahead and I get out my planner and I put everything that is like a non-negotiable I can't talk tonight for some reason a non-negotiable meeting or someplace you have to be, or something like that. So I will sit down and I'll look at my calendar for the next week and I'll put down all the appointments that I have, the meetings I have for work, the activity schedule for my kids, anywhere that they need to be, anything that I need to, anything where I need to be somewhere or I need to block out that time right. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to look back at my brain release and I'm going to schedule my number ones. So I'm going to put two to three number ones on Monday, two to three number ones on Tuesday, two to three number ones on Wednesday, and I can kind of look at what's on the list and I can figure out which day is going to work best. Or obviously I know if one of them has to be done on Monday because it's due by Monday at midnight, then I'll put it on Monday. But if it's something that can maybe go on Wednesday, then I'll put it a little bit further in the week and put the more urgent number once earlier in the week. I don't go as far as scheduling it into like the actual day, as far as, like, this task must be done at two o'clock PM on Tuesday. You can do that if you'd like to.

Diana Rene: 16:28

I found that that just didn't work for me. So I put it at the top of the day in my planner where it has like the tasks, the non-negotiable tasks, that have to be done that day, and there's only room for a few. I put it right there and that way I know on Monday I open up my planner and I can see these are the two or three non-negotiable tasks that I have to get done, and I get them done. I figure out when in the day it's going to work the best. I try and do them as early in the day as I possibly can, because then I know it doesn't feel like it's hanging over me. By the time I get to the evening it's like, oh shoot, I still have to do that. So I try to do them earlier in the day. But you know, hashtag mom life, it doesn't always work that way. So I just know that it has to get done urgently, otherwise there's a consequence right, because it's a number one If I get to the end of a day and there is just no way these tasks are happening.

Diana Rene: 17:30

Maybe I had a crazy busy day. Every you know, my car broke down and so I spent half the day at the dealership and then I had to pick up a kid from school because they were sick, and then, you know, helping sick child and then the other kid got sick right before bedtime and, like you know, you know, you know these days, right. So maybe it's one of those days and it's like 11 o'clock at night and I just have to crash because my brain can't even function right now. Then you know what. Those number ones didn't get done and so I will just move them to another day in the week. And if that means I have to move one of the non-negotiable tasks from Tuesday to Wednesday, then so be it. It's not the end of the world.

Diana Rene: 18:20

This isn't to completely pack and schedule out your week and not have any flexibility. This is just an exercise to get things off your mind and into your planner or onto your paper so that you are in more control over what has to get done, and it's going to increase your productivity, you guys, by so much. Because this is typically what happens. We schedule those number ones and we get them done right away. And so we start grabbing number ones from the next day and we get those done. And the next thing you know, you're on to number twos and you don't even have to worry about not getting them done. And the next thing you know you're on to number twos and you don't even have to worry about not getting them done. Is that how it always is? No, but that does tend to happen the more and more and more that you practice this entire brain release system.

Diana Rene: 19:11

So, after those number ones are scheduled, maybe you don't have a lot of number ones this week, maybe there's only two or three, and so you're like you're like okay, that's great, I'm going to get those done, but I think I can get more done. That's when we're going to jump back into the brain release and grab those number twos and schedule those into your week. And if you maybe have the opposite and you have so many number ones and not very many number twos, or maybe you have both, maybe you have tons of number ones and not very many number twos, or maybe you have both, maybe you have tons of number ones and tons of number twos. In that scenario, you're just going to focus on the number ones and the number twos are probably going to get bumped to next week, and that's okay, right, because there's not really a consequence and they're just semi-urgent. But if you only have a couple of number ones, then start scheduling in those number twos to get them done and maybe you can even get into the number threes and start getting those done also.

Diana Rene: 20:02

Now, if you have gone through your whole week, you got all your number ones done, you maybe got some of your number twos done, but there are still some number twos and definitely a bunch of number threes left. What you're going to do is next Sunday, when you do your brain release, you're just going to transfer those over to your new brain release. So you're kind of starting fresh with a new list that you can categorize, but you are not forgetting any of those items or tasks from your former list. And that's important, because that's the whole goal of doing this right, not feeling like there's anything floating out there that needs to get done that you're forgetting about, because this really is about helping to get everything out of our mind on the paper and just feeling more in control of your productivity.

Diana Rene: 20:52

I hope this was helpful. Send me a DM on Instagram. I'd love to hear if you do try this helpful. Send me a DM on Instagram. I'd love to hear if you do try this. Thanks for hanging out and listening to the Decluttered Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your Instagram stories. And if you're on Instagram, be sure to follow me at thedeclutteredmom and send me a DM to say hi. I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.