Extending my notetaking article. This is about capturing ideas.
Get a Notebook. And most probably you already have spare ones. If you can’t have a notebook. At least download Evernote to get started.
Here's why.
Give your imagination a tangible form.
We all get thoughts. Some of the users write them down. And very few work on them. And extremely few got to succeed on those.
Its numbers game. What you don't write does not stay with you.
Did you know smartphone apps that you use every day aren’t designed in another mobile, not even PC. They are all originated from an old fashioned pen and paper. Those other are all intermediate process.
Write your ideas.
I have over 200 ideas to write about that I am confident. And it's growing. Everyday. Exponentially.
Thanks to my habit of recording what I hear or what I find useful or what I find from my imagination. I keep it. One example is my all-time personal favored article Screenshots have Build Me. This article is so close to my heart. :)
Just because I use a plain notebook, doesn’t mean you should too. At least get one. Get fancy. Or get Hello Kitty one. I won’t judge you.
Do exercises. I was watching this workshop and without thinking anything, I grab my notebook. Did exercise for 20 minutes in the middle of the video. I had to rewind it.
A lot of videos we watch. Not all ideas present there aren’t useful. But if you not eve write that one idea. You won’t see progress in your life.
Journal.
Whole seperate article is coming.
But let me tell you this today. Things that I have journaled about 2 years ago are becoming realities. Journalling is an underrated superpower.
Write about what you want to experience in your life.
When people asked to define themselves. They start to reconcile their past experiences. This is worse. It's making you stuck.
The past does not shape you. The past is not you. Of course, if you let it, It will. Many people who have started first businesses failed, they don’t try another one in their whole life.
I have stopped writing for so many times. But again, you won’t mind that. Because what you are reading is the product of me fighting to resistance every day.
While reading something, you may come across something that you want to add in your life. Even something that may seem absurd. And you won’t probably follow through it. But not writing it down on a notebook will make sure you don’t act.
We get ideas about how we can do things differently, rather than discarding them, convert them into a line in your notebook.
That’s why I am practicing writing ten ideas about something every day. I couldn’t do it each day. But weekly for sure.
Write 10 ideas about Apple. About your learning. About the side hustle or job, you are doing. Anything works.
Professional movie editors also keep a notebook with them.
Whenever you have an idea, jot it down (along with the date), then forget about it.
The most important part of the process is to forget. Every idea seems amazing at the moment of inception, but once you sleep on it and check the notebook weeks later, you’ll find that your brain has already forgotten the weak ideas, but still thinks about the promising ones.
Learning.
I always used to though that I will run out of ideas to write about. But having a notebook will make sure I won’t have to see that day. Thanks to this, I am now writing articles daily and working on my side secret writing project.
If not, least have a mini notebook Or keep both. Like I do.
“I take notes like some people take drugs. There is an eight-foot stretch of shelves in my house containing nothing but full notebooks. I trust the weakest pen more than the strongest memory, and note taking is — in my experience — one of the most important skills for converting excessive information into precise action and follow-up.” — Tim Ferriss, in the blog post, How to Take Notes Like an Alpha-Geek
My learning has been accelerated by keeping a notebook with me. On the desk.
There's an old rule of thumb that if you have something really important you need done, ask for help from the busiest person you know. Here's an analogous rule: if you want to identify the most senior, knowledgeable people in an audience, look for the people who are taking notes and asking questions. - Ben Casnocha.
Thank you for reading.
Photo by Bia Andrade. Thank you.