Do you struggle with coming up with ideas? Do you pause in the middle of a project, stuck and unsure what to do next? Do you have a hard time focusing your energy and staying productive?
Your Creative Well is the guide that will help you unlock your...
We all get ideas in the spur of the moment. Sometimes it's something someone said. Sometimes it's something you hear on TV or the Radio or just sitting alone with your thoughts.
But Ideas are fleeting. You'll think of something cool and unless you can immediately flesh out that concept, you'll likely lose it.
This article started out as a simple idea that I wrote down: "write blog about note taking." I may have never written it if I didn't stop to capture that idea.
I have heard that ideas are only worth carrying out if they stand the test of time and that you shouldn't write things down when you think of them because if they're really a good idea, you won't forget.
Good ideas will keep you up at night.
Good ideas will distract you while driving your daughter home from soccer practice.
Good ideas will make you rich.
This approach isn't great for several reasons. Yes, good ideas should stand the test of time, but some ideas are good and will still escape you. Anyone who has ever gone grocery shopping and then realized after returning home that you forgot what you actually went there for will agree.
A better approach is to write down your ideas as they come and then decide later if they're worth pursuing. There are a multitude of little things I think of during the day that I should do, but I will never remember unless I put it into my note taking engine.
There are times when I'm at work and the words to a song pops into my head and I need to write them down before I forget them or a new revelation about one of my characters will shift to the surface that can add depth to a scene I'm writing.
I realized five or six years ago that I needed to start capturing these moments.
My first method was to jump straight into what technology is here for: to make your life easier. So I used my note app on my iPhone to keep track of my ideas.
I thought the idea was great. I carry my phone with me almost everywhere and I don't have to worry about misplacing a written note. It's all in one place.
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That's my retired iPhone 4.
Elegant, right? Well... There were some problems.
First of all, your phone will die faster if you're having a particularly idea-filled day. Perhaps I'm a techno-addict, but a dead phone makes me a little anxious. Don't let the precious die!
Next we have the problem of staying organized. This all-in-one approach meant that I either had to make new notes for every single idea or that I needed to keep my notes extremely organized. Not only did the default note app not directly facilitate this, but it takes more time to figure out and locate exactly where that note should go.
