Voice Brain Dump to Kanban: Talk It Out, Then Sort

If you run a business on your own, or close to it, your head is the busiest inbox you have. Customer follow-ups, a hiring question, the invoice you meant to chase, an idea for the pricing page, the bug a user mentioned on a call. None of it is written down, so all of it keeps coming back at you, usually at 2am.

A brain dump is the fix: get everything out of your head in one go, then decide what to do with it. Doing it by voice is faster than typing, and you hold back less. This post covers how to do it and how to turn the result into Kanban cards rather than another note you never reopen. For the wider picture of running tasks by speaking, see our guide to voice task management.

Why talk instead of type

Typing a brain dump is slow, and slow makes you filter. You start deciding what's worth writing before you've written it, and the small things (the ones that nag) get left out. Speaking runs closer to the speed you think. You can walk around while you do it. And it's easier to say "and that thing with the accountant" than to stop and work out how to phrase it.

The catch is well known. Voice memos pile up. Thirty minutes of rambling recorded on your phone is just a bigger version of the mess in your head, now in audio. A brain dump only helps if it ends up somewhere you work from. For most founders, that's a board.

Step 1: dump everything, without sorting

Set a timer for ten minutes. Start talking. Say everything that's on your mind about work, and some of what isn't if it's taking up space.

A few rules make it work:

• Don't judge while you dump. Saying something isn't promising to do it. You'll filter in step 2.
• One thing per sentence. "Chase the Acme invoice. Reply to Priya about the contract. Fix the signup email typo." Short sentences make sorting easier.
• Say what you know. If you know it's due Friday, say Friday. If it's for a client, say which one. It costs a second now and saves a field later.
• Go by area if you stall. Customers, product, money, team, admin, personal. Asking yourself "anything on money?" usually brings out three more.

Step 2: turn it into cards

This is where most brain dumps die. There are two ways to do it in Tarsen, depending on how you like to work.

Talk straight to the board. Press ⌘J and Tarsen Voice is listening. Instead of dumping into a recorder, dump into the board itself: "New card in Client work: chase the Acme invoice, due Friday, high priority." "New card: reply to Priya about the contract." Each one lands as a card as you say it, with the title, due date, priority and column you gave it. Tarsen works out you've finished from what you said, not from how long you paused, so you can stop and think mid-sentence without it cutting you off. You end the ten minutes with cards, not a recording.

Dump first, then convert. If you'd rather talk freely and sort afterwards, dictate into any notes app, then paste the text into the Ask Tarsen chat panel on a project and ask it to turn your notes into cards. It shows you a proposal first. Untick anything you don't want, then confirm. Nothing is created until you do.

The first way is quicker. The second suits a longer, messier dump where you want to see everything before any of it becomes a card. If you just want to capture single tasks as they come up during the day, see add tasks by voice.

Step 3: sort the cards

Now you have a pile of cards. Sorting them is quick, and you can do this by voice too:

• Delete or archive what isn't real. Some things only needed saying. "Archive the newsletter redesign card" is fine. Not everything you said needs doing.
• Set priority on what matters. "Make the Acme invoice urgent." Be honest: if everything is high priority, nothing is.
• Add dates where there's a real deadline. Don't invent deadlines to feel organised. A made-up date is one you'll learn to ignore.
• Assign what isn't yours. If you have a contractor or a small team, "assign the signup email fix to Sam" gets it off your plate now.
• Put it in the right project. Client work, product, admin. Fewer projects is better. You want to say their names without thinking.

Tarsen asks for a spoken yes before it deletes a card, and reads the card's name back so a misheard word doesn't cost you the wrong one.

Step 4: let the board choose today

A well-sorted board still shows you everything, and everything isn't a plan. This is where Mission Mode comes in. It reads your open cards (due dates, priority, estimates, blocked state, how long things have sat untouched) and suggests a short plan for the day that fits the time you actually have. You can pin the one thing that can't slip and push back what can wait.

The brain dump gets everything onto the board. Mission Mode gets you from the board to the next few hours.

A weekly routine for founders

The pattern that holds up for people running everything themselves:

1. Monday morning, ten minutes: voice brain dump straight onto the board.
2. Five minutes after: sort it. Archive, prioritise, date, assign.
3. Every morning: open Mission Mode, or ask the board "what's due today?" and pick from there.
4. Through the day: when something turns up, say it. When you finish something, say that too: "move the Acme invoice to Done."
5. Friday: ask "what did I finish this week?" It's a better end to the week than staring at what's left.

The point isn't the routine. It's that your head stops being the place work is stored. More on how Tarsen fits that kind of week on the founders page.

What it costs to talk

Voice minutes come with every plan. Free includes 15 minutes for the whole workspace, once, so you can try it. Pro includes 30 minutes a month for each person, pooled across the workspace. Lifetime includes 15 minutes a month for the workspace. A ten-minute Monday dump fits easily into either monthly allowance, and the Free minutes are enough to try one.

No audio is stored. The text of a voice conversation is kept for 90 days and only you can read it.

Try it

Next time your head feels full, talk it onto the board instead of carrying it around. Try Tarsen Voice and do your first brain dump in ten minutes.