Different Tools for Capturing Ideas

I was driving to work this morning and I found myself thinking about the different methods I use for capturing ideas. Sometimes I like to just write things down longhand. Other times it is a voice memo. Or an email that I send myself. The point is, you should never limit your ideas by the ways you have of documenting them. Specifically, a lack of means to document ideas doesn't mean one should simply have no ideas. But... What about if I'm on my motorcycle? Should I pull over and get my phone out so I can get an idea down? Or try to remember it until I get to work? This is one problem I've had so far that is an exception. I'm still working on that one. The point is to be able to do two things. First, use a medium that you're comfortable with and that isn't so complex that it is prohibitive to easy use. Second, have the right medium for the right idea. I talk fast, I type fast, but I write longhand VERY slowly. That's a good thing sometimes. I'm very deliberate when I write longhand. Often I'm revising what I want to write in my mind a few sentences ahead while I'm writing. It is a bit hard to explain in any other way. I have to self-censor myself because I want to try to get the words down in as few actual characters as possible. Literally. Sometimes I'll use smaller words just because I will have less to write. It lends a completely different voice to whatever it is I'm writing. This is nice, but I'll often have a moment of (new idea, story arc, bit of extra detail, correction for something I already wrote) and will either lose my train of thought or leave something out. The writing is still linear, and the reader can still follow it, but it ends up missing something. In contrast, if I'm typing I can get very wordy. It is easy for me to type at nearly the same speed I'm thinking, so I can just go and go. As a result I have to do a lot more editing after the fact. Hence the cold harsh reality that some day, if I want to do something with these topics I'm covering in an attempt to consolidate them into a readable tome, I'm going to have my share of editing in front of me. That's fine though, because at least I know I'm not going to be missing anything. I always have some way of getting things down on paper (as a manner of speaking) so I can access them later on. But the trick is in being able to figure out what you're trying to remember when you finally get around to reading and categorizing these thoughts. And the worst part? There's no magical system that necessarily works for everyone. We all have to figure out how to make this work individually, and it can take a good deal of time in order to do so. For me, I've been through a number of different methods for capturing ideas. This has run the gamut from carrying around a pocket notebook all the time to having different apps on my cellphone, to using a stand-alone voice recorder, to calling and leaving myself voicemails at work. And all points in between. And you know what? All of these things served their purpose well while I was using them and they still do in many cases. We don't necessarily outgrow our systems or find better ones. We simply adopt new systems that might offer features we don't have as a part of our current systems. Those old systems are often still there waiting for us if we need to go back to them. We simply try to keep moving forward as things change. Technology can be a significant influencer of adoption of different systems. I went from an iPhone to a Droid phone last year (and have since gone back to an iPhone) and I found that many of the methods I liked to use previously for collection and transcription of ideas were not as easy to utilize on a new phone platform. So much so that I discarded my previous system of using the Notes app for iOS and moving everything directly into Evernote by use of the inbox. In hindsight, it actually ended up being a welcome change. Change isn't always a bad thing! So that's it. Short and sweet, find a way you're comfortable with getting your ideas down and go for it. Just remember that you're going to have to impose some system of organization on top of all of those notes so you can keep track of them. Depending on your proficiency with technology this can be an easy thing, and depending on your disposition towards the handwritten note this can be a very difficult thing!

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