How Lumin Works: Brain Dump to Ranked List

Step one — dump without sorting

Open Lumin and write everything down in one pass. Deadlines, errands, the email you're avoiding, the thing you keep meaning to book. Do not order it, group it or clean it up.

Sorting while you capture is the step that makes people stop. It turns a two-minute unload into a twenty-minute organising session, and organising is the thing you have no capacity for on the day you need this most.

Step two — what Signal AI reads

Signal AI evaluates the dump as a whole rather than line by line, which is what lets it spot that item four is the reason item nine is stuck. It weighs:

Hard time constraints — a real external deadline against a vague intention.
Consequence — what actually happens if this slips, and what it blocks.
Initiation cost — how hard something is to start, so the ranked list opens with something you can actually begin.

Step three — work the top item only

You get three tiers. Open the top of Urgent and work that one item. When it's done, take the next.

The discipline is not looking at the whole list again. Re-reading the full list reintroduces the choice you just paid to have removed.

When to dump again

Most people dump once in the morning and again when something significant lands. There is no required cadence, no streak and no review ritual — skipping a day costs nothing because there is no structure to fall out of date.