Capture Your Ideas

Sometimes inspiration strikes at the weirdest times. Maybe you come up with a new creative way to solve a problem you’ve been working on, or maybe you remember an errand you forgot to do or a call you forgot to make. As great as we think our memory might be, it’s only capable of storing this new information for 40 seconds before either encoding to long-term memory or being lost forever.

Something you should think about doing is having an easy and accessible way to capture your ideas. You can choose to write your ideas down in a little notebook you carry around, or store them somewhere in your phone. The important detail is you need to be able to access your tool of choice consistently and easily to facilitate the process.

Taking it one step further, when you document the thought that comes to mind you’ll actually be able to recall it better. The physical action of doing something carves out a deeper representation in your brain, so when it comes time to recall the thought you can better place yourself in the context of that original moment and remember more details than you would have otherwise.

This is exactly what I do to think of a new personal development tip every day! I’m constantly observing and curious about the world around me, and when something inspires me I write it down in my phone. Then when it comes time to sit down and prepare an episode, I pull up the list and have hundreds of things to reflect on.

You are full of great ideas, but unfortunately many of them are lost and gone forever because you didn’t have the system in place to store them. This can be your system, give it a try!