Getting it out of your head is the well-evidenced part. Masicampo and Baumeister found that writing a specific plan for an unfinished task removed its intrusive pull on attention — without the task being completed. The gap most apps leave is what happens to the pile afterwards.
Match your reason to the right tool
| Your reason | Best fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want the pile sorted for you | Lumin | Ranks the dump into Urgent, Important and Later automatically. |
| You want pure unstructured capture | Apple Notes or Obsidian | No structure imposed, files you own. |
| You want capture plus a knowledge base | Notion | Everything in one workspace if you'll maintain it. |
The comparison
| App | What it automates | Price (Aug 2026) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lumin | AI prioritisation from an unstructured brain dump | USD9/month or USD90/year; 7-day free trial, no card | Deciding what deserves attention first |
| Obsidian | Local markdown notes plus community task plugins | Free for personal use; paid sync add-on | You want local-first plain-text ownership and enjoy configuring your tools |
| Notion | Database-driven, fully custom | Free personal tier; paid plans from around USD10/user/month | You want one tool for documents, wikis and tasks and you enjoy building the system |
| Apple Reminders | Manual lists with location and time triggers | Free on Apple devices | You're all-Apple and want something free that Siri can capture into |
| TickTick | Manual lists plus calendar and Pomodoro timer | Free tier; Premium around USD36/year | You want a timer, habits and tasks in one app and you're happy to prioritise yourself |
Pricing checked August 2026. Vendors change plans often — follow the link in each row to confirm current pricing before you buy.
Where each one is genuinely better
Obsidian
Strength: Your data stays in plain files you own. Endlessly extensible.
Limitation: Task management is a plugin you assemble and maintain yourself.
Choose Obsidian instead of Lumin if you want local-first plain-text ownership and enjoy configuring your tools.
Notion
Strength: Infinitely flexible. If you can describe a workflow, you can build it — docs, wikis and tasks in one place.
Limitation: Flexibility is the cost. Building and maintaining the system is a project in itself, and it is slow to capture a quick thought.
Choose Notion instead of Lumin if you want one tool for documents, wikis and tasks and you enjoy building the system.
Apple Reminders
Strength: Free, deeply integrated with Siri, and much improved in recent releases.
Limitation: Apple-only, and no help with what to do first.
Choose Apple Reminders instead of Lumin if you're all-Apple and want something free that Siri can capture into.
TickTick
Strength: Best value in the category. Built-in Pomodoro timer, habit tracking and calendar view in one app.
Limitation: Feature density becomes its own maintenance burden. Prioritisation is still entirely manual.
Choose TickTick instead of Lumin if you want a timer, habits and tasks in one app and you're happy to prioritise yourself.
Where Lumin is the wrong choice
No team features, no calendar auto-scheduling, no time tracking. It answers 'what first', not 'when exactly'. If any of those is what you actually need, one of the tools above will serve you better. We would rather you bought the right thing than churned in a month.
Related guides
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Frequently asked questions
What is a brain dump?
Writing out everything on your mind in one unstructured pass, without sorting, editing or prioritising as you go. The point is to externalise it, not to organise it.
Does brain dumping actually work?
There is good evidence for the underlying mechanism. Masicampo and Baumeister (2011) showed that unfinished goals cause intrusive thoughts and degrade performance on unrelated tasks, and that writing a specific plan eliminated those effects even though the task remained undone. That's a finding about cognitive interference, not a productivity percentage.
Paper or app?
Paper is excellent for the dump itself and has no notifications. An app wins if you want the list to persist, sync, or be sorted afterwards. Many people use both.