How to plan when you have too much in your head
A brain dump helps. The real value comes from what you do next.
When everything feels important, the instinct is often to write a longer list. That can be useful for getting thoughts out of your head, but the relief is temporary if the list immediately becomes another thing to manage.
The useful part of a brain dump happens after capture. Separate what must happen soon from what merely feels loud. Notice which items are outcomes, which are maintenance, which belong to somebody else and which are ideas that do not need a place in this week at all.
Then ask a harder question: if the week becomes messy, what would you still want protected? That forces priority to mean something. Ten priorities are not ten priorities; they are ten requests competing for the same time.
For the next seven days, keep the visible plan smaller than the full list. You do not need to forget the rest. You just need to stop asking your brain to renegotiate the entire backlog every time you sit down to work.
A good plan should make the next decision easier. If looking at it creates more choosing, sorting and guilt, the plan is adding cognitive load instead of removing it.