The Brain Dump Framework
I haven’t struggled to come up with content ideas in over a decade. Here’s how you can say goodbye to “idea block” too.
Let’s be honest, it’s not that you’ve run out of ideas.
It’s that your brain is jammed up like a Saturday night Wetherspoons toilet.
You sit there, cursor blinking, taunting you like a smug little tosser who just nipped in ahead of you at the bar. It’s daring you to write something “brilliant.” And nothing comes out. No diamonds. Not even crap that you could dump on to Twitter, X, whatever the hell Musk likes to call it these days
. There’s just pressure. Like the psychic equivalent of being stuck on the loo for three hours after a beer-fuelled lamb bhuna bender.
I know that feeling too well. I used to think it meant I was broken. A fraud. Maybe not cut out for this whole creator/writer thing. I did the usual panic rituals: Signed up for courses I didn’t finish. Bought fountain pens that are more expensive than BMWs (Okay, maybe not quite BMWs, more like 35 year old Skodas). Built swipe files that, to this day, lay unswiped. Whispered sweet nothings to ChatGPT like, “Please just give me something… anything…”. Just for it to tell me to, “Piss off. Come up with your own damn ideas meat bag!”
Anyway, here’s what I’ve learned about coming up with content ideas:
It’s not about inspiration.
It’s about using a system.
You don’t need a muse. She’s a fickle sod that’s always washing her hair when I come calling. She doesn’t know what’s she’s missin’! Instead, you need a plunger.
Enter: The Brain Dump Framework. (See why I used the toilet metaphor now? Dump? Oh, forget it!)
This is not some fluffy journaling habit. This is not a triple quilted, £10 a sheet, bog roll you buy in Waitrose. And it’s absolutely not another “just meditate the shit out of it” BS system that’ll make ideas flock to you like a seagulls eying up your cone of chips.
This is my personal pipe-cleaner. One of those orange plungers you can buy in B&Q that always - guaranteed ladies and gents - gets the job done. This is tool I’ve wielded, like Poseidon’s trident, to purge the creative sludge and tap into the deep, chaotic, beautifully absurd mess that is my AuDHD-fuelled brain.
It’s what’s built blog empires. Helped businesses thrive. And kept me - barely - on the right side of sanity.
And now, I’m going to hand you the plunger. Role up your sleeves. Slip on these yellow rubber gloves, you’ll need ‘em! It’s gonna get messy.
The Day I Stopped Treating My Brain Like a Filing Cabinet
I remember the exact moment my brain finally gave me the finger.
I sat down to write, heart full of caffeine and hope, and… nothing. Not even the usual internal monologue berating me. Just numb. Like my brain had packed up all its belongings and left a post-it note saying “I’m leaving you for a fit-fella in Spain called Ramirez. Adiós sucker! ”
So, in a mini-meltdown disguised as a productivity breakthrough, I opened a blank Google Doc and just - vomited. Words of corse. Oh, and phrases, rants, rogue metaphors, questions I didn’t even know I’d been carrying. No editing. No self-censorship. Just chaos. Glorious, world-churning, dizzying, chaos.
25 twenty minutes later… I had gold.
Well, muddy, putrid, stinking like you just fell the sewer, gold.
I’d cracked something open. Not inspiration. Access.
Turns out, my brain isn’t a neatly categorised filing cabinet. It’s a hoarder’s attic with a dodgy lightbulb. And a squirrel living in the corner that I’m positive wants to eat my face off. But if I poke around long enough - rolled up newspaper in hand, because you know, that damn squirrel - there’s treasure buried under the mess.
That was over a decade ago.
Since then, brain dumping has become my religion. My ritual. My creative exorcism. I’ve used it to spit out ideas for blogs, books, businesses - even a few dodgy video game storylines that somehow made sense after the third rewrite and two litres of Pepsi Max.
It’s how I grew CareerGamers to 150,000+ monthly visitors.
How I built a writing practice that now runs on instinct, not panic.
And how I kept creating even when my head felt like a broken Etch A Sketch. In a blender.
And I swear to you, if your brain feels like a messy attic too?
This can work for you.
It already is working. You’ve just got to stop tidying , just let your mind spew out onto paper. Or screen. Or… you get the idea.
In the next section, I’ll actually skip over - mostly - the toilet humour and give you my “Holy shit! This makes coming up with content ideas so easy!” system.
The Brain Dump Framework: My Exact 3-Step Process
Here’s the full system. No gatekeeping. No fluff. but a little bit more serious so the message doesn’t get lost in my desperate attempt to make you laugh.
1. Read (Or Watch) Something That Stretches You
Spend 20–30 minutes each day consuming ideas that challenge you. A YouTube video. A book chapter. A podcast.
Not to copy. To spark. To plant seeds. Plenty of fibre goodness. Sorry I did promise to keep this serious.
2. Sleep on It
Let your subconscious do the heavy lifting. You don’t need to “try” to think of ideas.
Just give your brain space to breathe. Let connections form in the background.
3. Dump
The next morning, open a doc. Set a timer for 20–30 minutes.
Write whatever comes up from yesterday’s material.
Don’t edit. Don’t organize. Don’t stop.
Then, once you’ve emptied your brain…
4. Prompt the Machine
This is where my system expands into the new AI age. No more manual plunging for me! I’ve got the ACMY Clear Right Away Plunger (C.R.A.P), now!
Anyway, paste your dump into ChatGPT, or another AI tool, along with a simple prompt like:
“Act as a content idea strategist. Extract 10-15 unique ultra-niche content ideas from this brain dump. Make sure they reflect the tone, themes, and perspective of the author. The ideas will be for a specific audience and within a high level topic area of my choosing.
Before we continue, can you confirm for me that you understand what I want you to do? Once you have confirmed for me you understand. Please ask me the following questions:
What is your target audience?
What is your high-level topic area?
Can you please paste in your Brain dump?“
Next, fill in the questions the AI asks you, and paste in your brain dump. Hit return. And that’s it.
Your jumbled torrent of raw ideas that you generated in your mind has been transformed by the AI. It took all the raw material and filtered and distilled it into the purest, clearest ideas. All hail our AI overlords!
From there, pick one and run. Iterate on it, mix ideas together, split them apart. Ask ChatGPT to come up with more ideas.
Or brain dump again tomorrow.
The Hidden Gift of Brain Dumping
What I didn’t expect when I started this?
Brain dumping didn’t just help me come up with ideas. It helped me stop tying my self-worth to one idea.
It taught me to fall in love with the process instead of the outcome.
It taught me that creativity isn’t lightning. It’s throwing clay onto the potters wheel.
You throw it down, raw, muddy wet. A clump of potential, that with your fingers and imagination, can shape into anything.
TL;DR: Stop Waiting for Inspiration. Make a Mess Instead
You don’t need another swipe file. You don’t need another content calendar.
You need permission to stop gatekeeping your own brain.
Here’s the Brain Dump Framework in one breath:
Consume something interesting
Sleep on it
Dump your thoughts unfiltered
Prompt AI to extract usable ideas
Repeat daily
If you do this for just one week, I promise:
The phrase “I don’t know what to write” will be dead to you.
Nick, I'm bad with accents but...🏴?