07 Capture and manage all ideas
I get ideas occurring to me at all times of the day and night. Many have little value, but just as many are quite valuable to me. The challenge is to capture them all in a way that I can retrieve and make use of them at the right time to capitalize on my brilliance. I find that I receive some of the best ideas when my attention is focused on something totally unrelated or when I am relaxed and letting my mind wander. Do you ever get ideas come to you when you are relaxed, like in the shower or just waking up and find that if you don’t capture them, you lose them, forever? This is pretty common.
One of the best books I have read that helped me learn how to do this is David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. The key principle that I learned from this book was that I need to have a system for capturing ideas when they occur to me before they disappear. This system will work best if I can trust that I will be able to retrieve that idea when needed, which will allow me to clear my mind of that idea and focus on the current tasks at hand. I found that capturing the ideas was easy, but coming up with a way to manage the ideas so I can retrieve them was a challenge.
Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought are commonly the most valuable. — Frances Bacon
