Most of us have done it.
You are driving and suddenly remember an email you need to send. You are at your kid’s soccer game and think of an appointment you need to book. You are halfway through cooking dinner when you remember something important for work.
You tell yourself: “I’ll remember that.”
Plot twist. You probably won’t.
Sunshine Coast businesswoman, author and keynote speaker Kate Langford (main feature image) knows the feeling well. In fact, she describes her brain as having what feels like 42 tabs open at once.
Rather than adding another productivity system to the pile, she decided to build the technology she actually wanted.
The result is Brain Dump Express, an Australian-developed app that lets you speak whatever is running through your head and uses technology to turn those thoughts into actions.
The concept came from Langford’s own life. She runs two consulting businesses, leads a team, has written a book, speaks professionally and is raising three children while her husband works FIFO.
Her days can involve client meetings, emails, school commitments, children’s sport, family logistics and the endless mental to-do list that comes with all of the above.
And like plenty of people, she already had the tools that were supposed to help.
Notes. Reminders. Emails. Calendars.
The problem was that they still required her to stop, capture the thought, work out where it belonged. And then actually do something about it.
“My problem wasn’t a lack of ideas or another place to write things down,” Langford says. “I had Notes, reminders, emails and calendars. The problem was that I still had to stop what I was doing, organise the thought and then action it.”
So she asked a very modern question: What if technology could do that part for me?
Brain Dump Express allows users to speak naturally rather than type or organise their thoughts first.
The app identifies the actionable parts of what they have said, such as an email, text message, calendar appointment, task or reminder, then presents them for review.
Users can check or change the actions before approving them.
So instead of stopping mid-life to create a list about the thing you just remembered, you can essentially say it out loud, let the app work out what needs to happen and keep moving.
“I didn’t want another productivity app that I had to manage,” Langford says.
“I wanted to dump everything in my head, have it work out what needed to happen, let me check it and then actually take action. I wanted to say it once and move on.”
It is a simple idea, but it taps into a very familiar problem. Our brains are doing far more administrative work than they probably need to.
Langford has ADHD and says living with a “fast brain” heavily influenced the idea. But she deliberately hasn’t positioned Brain Dump Express as an ADHD app.
Because you don’t need ADHD to have a brain that refuses to clock off.
The business owner leaving a meeting with six follow-ups. The executive remembering something while driving home. The parent making dinner while mentally running through tomorrow’s schedule. The person who has a brilliant idea in the shower and then spends the next hour trying not to forget it.
As Langford puts it: “You don’t need ADHD to have 100 things going through your head.”
That is where the technology becomes interesting.
Rather than asking people to change their behaviour to fit another productivity platform, Brain Dump Express is designed to fit around the way people already think and speak.
It also represents a broader shift in the way we interact with technology. We have become used to asking our phones to play music, navigate us across town, answer questions and remind us about appointments.
Langford’s idea takes that relationship one step further: what if your phone could take the messy thought in your head and turn it into something useful?
The app officially launched on the Sunshine Coast in September following a launch event attended by around 100 local business and community leaders, professionals and supporters.
For Langford, however, the technology is ultimately about creating a little more mental breathing room.
“Your brain is incredibly good at thinking. It was never designed to be your filing cabinet.”
Brain Dump Express is now available through the Apple App Store and Google Play.
And for anyone currently carrying around 17 half-finished thoughts, three things they need to remember and an increasingly desperate promise to themselves that they will “write it down later”, it may be worth giving the brain dump a try.
