The Brain Dump Pattern
What the brain dump pattern is.
Brain dump is a sorting move. You have a head full of stuff — to-dos, ideas, errands, things to remember, items to ask about, calls to return — and you want it out of your head and into a place that's organized.
The pattern is simple: tell Cowork what's on your mind, name the categories you want it sorted into, and Cowork does the sort. Then it saves the result somewhere you can come back to.
What this lesson is — and isn't.
This is a logistics pattern, not a feelings pattern. It's not "help me process my day." It's "here are 14 things rattling around in my head — sort them so I can put them down."
Try one right now.
Open Family Manager. Start a new chat. Send something like this — adapted to whatever's actually rattling around for you right now:
You can do this typing on your computer, or texting or speaking via voice-to-text on your phone in Dispatch. Brain dumps tend to work better spoken than typed — you'll capture more in less time — but typed is fine.
First time? Here's what to expect.
If this is your first brain dump in Family Manager, Cowork doesn't know your preferences yet. It'll propose a set of categories ("here's how I'd sort these — does this work?") and ask where to save the result. Adjust anything that's off, or just say yes and run with what it picks. For the course to line up cleanly with the dashboard you'll build in two lessons, ask Cowork to save the result as current-week-priorities.md in your Family Manager folder — that's the filename the dashboard will read from.
After this first time, Cowork remembers your categories and where to save brain dumps. Every future dump just runs — same buckets, same file, no setup. If you want to keep adding to the same file, Cowork tacks the new items on. If you want a fresh start (like Sunday — next screen), tell it to replace what's there.
The Sunday version — same pattern, weekly.
The brain dump pattern works for any moment you've got a lot in your head. There's also a weekly version that's worth building into your routine: a Sunday dump of everything you know is coming this week.
The Sunday version is the same prompt with a different intent — you're not just sorting what's already in your head, you're scanning the week ahead and capturing everything you know is on it.
Notice the one difference from a normal brain dump: this prompt says "replace" instead of letting Cowork tack new items onto the existing list. Sunday is a reset — the current-week-priorities file gets a clean rewrite for the new week. During the week, new brain dumps just add to what's there. Sunday wipes and resets.
This is a habit, not a project.
Sunday brain dumps work because they're recurring. Once-and-done won't get you the benefit. Every week at roughly the same time will. Pick a time that works for you.
Where this connects to next.
The reason we save brain dump output to current-week-priorities.md isn't just for filing — it's because the next two lessons build on it.
What current-week-priorities.md becomes
- Your dashboard's to-do block (built in the dashboard lesson, two lessons from now) reads directly from this file. Whatever's in your to-do bucket on this file becomes the to-do view on your dashboard.
- Your Sunday brain dump can run on a schedule (the next lesson — Scheduled Tasks). You can set Cowork to nudge you Sunday afternoon, or even draft a starter list from what's already in your Project for you to react to.
That's why this is the same "current-something" file pattern from Your First Real Use last lesson. Your Family Manager Project is building up a small collection of "current state" files — meals, priorities, and (in Phase 4) money scan and active temp Projects. Each one feeds the dashboard.
Next: Scheduled Tasks.
Cowork can run on its own schedule — a Sunday brain-dump nudge, a weekday-morning email scan, a Friday-afternoon week-ahead recap. Set them up once and they run on their own. Next lesson.
Continue to Scheduled Tasks →