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Mind Sweep: Get Every Open Loop Out of Your Head

A free interactive mind sweep. Empty every open loop out of your head in one pass, then sort each one into Do, Decide, or Let it go. Twelve prompts to get you unstuck. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Brihas·Updated 11 October 2026

David Allen introduced the mind sweep in Getting Things Done, and his framing is still the clearest one: your mind is a terrible filing cabinet but an excellent alarm. Anything unfinished that is not written down somewhere you trust stays partly loaded, and it reminds you about itself at random — usually at 2am, usually all at once.

Most articles about this tell you to use paper. Paper is fine. What paper does not do is stop you triaging while you capture, which is the mistake that makes most sweeps shallow. This tool separates the two phases on purpose.

Write one thing at a time. Do not judge it, order it, or work out what to do about it — that is the next step, and doing it now is what stops the list halfway.

Stuck? What is one thing you keep meaning to do and not doing?

Nothing here is sent anywhere. Your list is saved in this browser only — not to an account, not to us. Clearing your browser data clears it.

How to do a mind sweep

Set aside ten uninterrupted minutesPhone face down, notifications off, door shut. A sweep done in gaps between interruptions produces the top six items and stops — and the top six were never the problem, because you already know those.
Write everything, in any order, without judging itWork and home in the same list. Trivial beside enormous. “Reply to Priya” next to “decide about the job”. Do not group, do not rank, do not work out what to do. One line each, and keep moving.
Use prompts when you stallAlmost everyone empties out at around item six and feels done. You are not done — you have cleared what was at the surface. The twelve prompts in the tool above exist for exactly this moment, and the items that come out after a prompt are usually the ones that have been costing you the most.
Only then, sort each item onceThree buckets. Do: there is a clear next action and it is yours. Decide: something has to be chosen before anything can happen. Let it go: it is not yours, not now, or not worth it. One pass, no revisiting.
Look at the Decide pile, because that is the weightThe Do pile is just work, and work is fine. The Let it go pile is relief. The Decide pile is what has actually been draining you — open loops that cannot close because a choice is pending. That is the list worth taking somewhere.

Why writing it down works

There is a real mechanism here, not just tidiness. An intention you have not acted on stays cognitively active — it keeps surfacing, and it competes for attention while you are doing something else. The useful finding is that the loop does not need to be completed to quieten down. It needs to have a plan: a specific enough record of what it is and where it will be handled.

That is why a sweep produces relief out of proportion to the work it does. You have not finished anything. You have only moved thirty things out of a system that cannot hold them into one that can, and your attention stops being asked to keep them all warm.

Mind sweep vs brain dump vs to-do list

These get used interchangeably and they are not the same exercise.

	What goes in	What it is for	How often
Mind sweep	Every unfinished thing, across every area of life — including feelings, decisions and things that are not tasks at all.	Emptying. Reducing what your attention has to hold.	Weekly, or whenever your head feels full.
Brain dump	Usually the same thing, with less structure. The term is more common outside GTD and often means one topic rather than everything.	Getting unstuck on something specific.	Ad hoc.
To-do list	Only things that are actions, usually only yours, usually only work.	Doing. It assumes the emptying already happened.	Daily.

The practical consequence: a to-do list cannot do a mind sweep's job. Most of what is weighing on someone is not a task. It is an unmade decision, an unhad conversation, or something they are carrying for another person. None of that goes on a to-do list, which is precisely why the list can be empty and the head still full.

When a mind sweep is not the right tool

Worth saying, because the technique gets prescribed for everything.

If the same three items come back every week, sweeping is not the problem — those three are stuck for a reason, and another list will not move them. Each one needs a decision, and that is a different exercise.
If your head is full of one thing rather than thirty, this is the wrong shape. A sweep spreads attention; a single looping worry needs it contained. The overthinking test separates which kind of loop you are in.
If writing the list makes you feel worse, stop. For some people a full inventory is overwhelming rather than relieving, usually when the real issue is that there is genuinely too much and no authority to remove any of it. That is a load problem, and it is what the burnout test is for.

The Decide pile is the one that does not clear itself. Brihas is a private thinking partner for working through exactly those — the choices that have been open for weeks because every option costs something.

Work through the Decide pile →

Mind sweep: common questions

What is a mind sweep?

A mind sweep is a single unfiltered pass in which you write down every unfinished thing in your head — tasks, decisions, worries, promises, things you have been avoiding — without sorting or judging any of it. It comes from David Allen's Getting Things Done, where it is the first step: you cannot organise what you have not captured. The sorting is a separate second phase.

How is a mind sweep different from a brain dump?

In practice they describe the same act. “Mind sweep” is the GTD term and usually implies completeness — everything, across every area of life. “Brain dump” is the more general word and is often used for one topic at a time. If you are emptying your whole head, you are doing a mind sweep.

How long should a mind sweep take?

Ten minutes for a regular sweep. Your first one, if you have never done it, can take thirty to sixty — there is a backlog. The signal that you are finished is not that you run out of items at around six, which almost everyone does; it is that you work through prompts and nothing new comes up.

How often should I do one?

Weekly is the standard recommendation and it holds up. Beyond that, do one whenever your head feels full, before a holiday, after a period of chaos, or at 2am when you cannot sleep for the list — that last one is the most valuable, because it is the loop doing exactly what an unwritten list does.

What do I do with the list afterwards?

Sort each item once into Do, Decide, or Let it go. Then act on the piles differently: Do items go into whatever system you actually use; Let it go items are deleted, properly; and the Decide pile is the one worth real attention, because those are the loops that cannot close until a choice is made. Most of the weight is in that pile.

Is my list private?

Yes. Nothing you type here is sent anywhere — there is no network request in this tool at all. The list is saved in your own browser so it survives a reload, and clearing your browser data clears it. We record that the tool was used and how many items were in the list, never the items themselves.

Can I do a mind sweep on paper instead?

Absolutely, and many people prefer it. The only thing paper does not give you is enforced separation between capture and sorting, which is the most common way a sweep goes shallow — you start deciding what to do with item three and items four to twenty never come out. If you use paper, write the whole list before you look at any of it.

Keep going

GuideMental clarityWhy your head feels full, and what actually empties it.Free toolOverthinking testIf it is one loop rather than thirty items, a sweep is the wrong tool. This tells you which you have.

Brihas is a structured reflection tool, not a medical or diagnostic service. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a treatment plan, or a substitute for care from a qualified professional. If you are in crisis, please reach a helpline or a clinician.