FREE Twenty-minute protocol

Empty your head onto paper. In twenty minutes.

The Brain Dump Protocol is the first move when the project is too big to start. One sitting. One page. Every piece of the thing, out of your head and onto something you can look at.

Send me the protocol

One email. The protocol's yours. Use it this Friday.

Check your inbox in the next minute; the link takes you straight to it. No nurture sequence, no upsell drip. Just the protocol.

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What it solves

You don't have a motivation problem. You have a scope problem.

The project in your head is too big to start. Every time you think about it, your brain calculates the total weight and shuts down. The fix isn't willpower. It's sequencing: finding the one piece you can finish this Friday that makes the rest possible.

The Brain Dump Protocol is the twenty-minute exercise that does the sequencing for you. By the end you have the whole project on paper, sorted by what ships first and what waits.

How it works

Three passes. Twenty minutes.

i.

The dump (seven minutes)

Open a doc. Set a timer for seven minutes. Type every piece of the project that's in your head: sections, sentences, references, half-arguments, vague gestures. No editing, no organizing, no filtering. The point is to externalize, not to organize.

ii.

The sort (eight minutes)

Read what you wrote. Tag each piece: must-have, nice-to-have, or cut. The protocol gives you the criteria for each tag. Most people discover the project is half the size they thought it was.

iii.

The first finish (five minutes)

Pick one must-have. Write the smallest version of it that would still ship. That's the thing you finish this Friday. Everything else waits.

Honest framing

What this isn't.

This isn't a productivity system. It isn't a planning method. It isn't a way of working. It's a twenty-minute exercise for one specific kind of stuck: the kind where the project is too big and the brain shuts down before you start.

The honest version

What you get here is the whole twenty-minute protocol (dump, sort, first finish), and it's yours to keep and use forever. It gets you unstuck and leaves you with a sorted project and a first piece that's moving. If you then want to take that sorted pile all the way to a finished draft, that's From Stuck to Submitted, the $37 framework: an expanded Brain Dump as Part i (more passes, worked examples), then the Architecture Pass and the Submission Edit that turn the pile into something submittable. Same as the free Anti-Slop tool: the free version works on its own; the paid one goes further. If twenty minutes is all you need, twenty minutes is all you'll spend here.

Included with the framework

This protocol, running in your account.

Included · runs in your hub

You don’t just read it. You run it.

Buy From Stuck to Submitted and this page stops being instructions. Your purchase unlocks the Digital Brain Dump in your hub: the interactive tool that runs all five passes in your account. It keeps the clock, saves every thought as you go, and hands you the ordered build list that Part ii turns into a finished draft. Type it, or speak it. This page is the manual. The tool is where the work happens.

finishbyfri.day/hub/brain-dump
The Digital Brain Dump in voice mode, Pass 1: a running timer and the spoken dump appearing as separate lines in the transcript field, one thought per line.

1. Dump it. Type or speak, one thought at a time. The clock keeps you moving.

finishbyfri.day/hub/brain-dump
The Digital Brain Dump, Pass 2, the sort: each dumped thought is now a separate row tagged MUST, NICE, or CUT, so the writer can see what is required to ship.

2. Sort it. Tag each one MUST, NICE, or CUT. Now you know what should ship.

Take it all the way

Ready to finish the whole thing? Get the framework.

From Stuck to Submitted — $37. The expanded Brain Dump as Part i, then the Architecture Pass and Submission Edit that turn the sorted pile into a finished draft. Finish a draft or your money back, seven days.

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