How to Turn a Brain Dump Into a To-Do List by Talking

It's Sunday evening and your head is full. The vet, the bill, the email you keep meaning to send, the thing at school on Thursday. None of it is hard. There's just a lot of it, and holding it all in your head is tiring.

Writing it down helps, but sitting down to write a tidy list can feel like one more job. Talking it out is quicker. You say it the way it comes to you, and the list gets made for you.

Here's how to do that well in Minima Do.

What a Brain Dump Is For

A brain dump is a way of getting everything out of your head so you can stop carrying it. It doesn't need an order. It doesn't need to be complete. Anything you get out is one less thing to keep remembering.

The trouble with most brain dumps is what comes after. You end up with a page of half sentences that still needs sorting. When you talk it out in Minima Do, that sorting is done for you. Each thing you mention becomes its own to-do.

How to Do It

Tap the record button and choose To-do. The screen suggests saying each thing you need to do, which is really all the instruction you need.

Then talk. When you're done, tap stop. A moment later your to-dos are on the list.

One to-do dump can run up to 3.5 minutes. That's longer than it sounds, and you'll probably run out of things to say before then. If you do have more, stop and start a second one.

An Example, Start to Finish

Here's the kind of thing you might say, a little messy, the way people actually talk:

"Okay. Call the vet tomorrow about Biscuit's vaccines. We're out of coffee and dish soap. I need to pay the electric bill, I think it's due Friday. Email Priya the budget numbers. Oh, and schedule the oil change next Tuesday. And I keep forgetting to take the library books back."

From that, you'd get a list along these lines:

• Call the vet about Biscuit's vaccines, due tomorrow
• Buy coffee and dish soap
• Pay the electric bill, due Friday
• Email Priya the budget numbers
• Schedule the oil change, due next Tuesday
• Return the library books

The exact wording will vary. Coffee and dish soap might come out as one to-do or two. "Okay" and "I think" and "I keep forgetting" usually drop out, because they aren't things to do.

Look at the oil change, though. Did you mean to make the call on Tuesday, or is the oil change itself on Tuesday? You knew what you meant when you said it. Read it back and fix the date if it landed on the wrong one. That kind of quick check is part of the habit.

How Spoken Days Become Due Dates

When you mention a day next to a task, Minima Do uses it as the due date. Plain days like "Friday", "tomorrow" and "next Tuesday" are the easy case.

Vaguer phrases are a different story. "Sometime soon", "after the holidays" or "when it warms up" might not land on the date you had in mind, or on any date at all. That's fine. Tap the row and set the date yourself.

If a to-do has a time on it, Minima Do sends a reminder notification, an hour before the time when you haven't set a separate reminder. That needs notifications to be allowed for the app.

Tips for Talking

You don't need to prepare. A few small things help, though.

One thing at a time is fine. Pauses are fine too. You can say one task, think for a few seconds, and say the next.

Rambling is fine. You don't have to strip out the backstory. "I need to email Priya, because the numbers changed after Thursday's meeting" will usually still come out as a short to-do.

Corrections usually work. If you say "Call Dana, no, Dan, about the invoice", you'll usually get a to-do to call Dan. Usually. Glance at it afterward.

Put the day next to the thing. "Pay the electric bill Friday" is easier to get right than mentioning Friday three sentences later.

Say it like you'd to a friend. Full sentences, half sentences, lists of nouns. "Milk, eggs, trash bags" is a perfectly good thing to say.

Names, Spelled Right

Speech to text is good, but it has never met your colleague Siobhan or your dog Biscuit. Names, product names and work jargon are the words most likely to come out wrong.

That's what known words are for. Add the names and terms you use often (on iPhone they are in Profile, or in the sidebar). From your next recording on, transcripts and summaries spell them your way. Recordings you made before you added a word stay as they were.

It takes a minute to add a handful, and it saves you fixing the same name every week.

What to Do Right After

Give the new list thirty seconds while it's fresh:

• Tick the circle on anything you already did. Finished to-dos fold away under Done.
• Tap a row to fix the wording or the due date if something came out wrong.
• Swipe to delete anything that turned out not to be a to-do after all.

If you remember one more thing after you stopped recording, you don't need another dump. Use the typing row above your open to-dos and add it by hand.

When a Brain Dump Helps Most

Some moments where a minute of talking makes a difference:

• Sunday evening, before the week starts
• First thing in the morning, while the coffee brews
• Right after a long phone call that left you with things to do
• In the parking lot, before you drive home from work
• At the end of a day when your head is still going

Pick one or two that already fit your week.

Try It With Whatever Is on Your Mind

If you have a list in your head right now, that's a good test. Download Minima Do on the App Store, tap record, choose To-do and talk for a minute. Minima Do Pro is $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year in the US, and new subscribers can start with a free week when their Apple Account is eligible.