Writing Things Down

An idea can be lost so quickly. I personally do not have a good system for collecting ideas. 
To me the very idea of collecting ideas can be overwhelming. I have many ideas all the time.  This part is fine with me, it’s the fact that I’m just not going to go back and review my ideas that bothers me.  It’s that feeling I used to get as a kid when I didn’t do my homework.  Like a little pit in your stomach kind of feeling-that nags. 

Yet, I will say that writing down the ideas and never looking at them again, well this is infinitely better than simply not writing anything down.  I can’t place it, but there was a description of a writer and she would be constantly laughing and writing down ideas and laughing to herself.  This image just cracks me up because it’s like the joke was on everyone else. This obviously wouldn’t bode well interpersonally, but the image is lovely.

Keeping even a small notebook and writing things down and never looking at it-the thing about this it does a couple things:

1. The very act of writing has apparently been proven to help you remember something better. 

2. It does signal to people that you are taking them seriously especially superiors. HOWEVER. I have found that if you want to be the boss, it sometimes helps to not write things down, because it signals to others that they are the ones who need to be writing.  This is of course a little bit of trickery that I don’t love-but it’s true. It also sometimes necessitates that you inquire about whether they plan on writing down any of the things you’ve discussed.

The funny thing about this whole train of thought is that I had a thought that I was going to write about and it flitted out of the window in my brain as I was distracted by refilling the ink in my pen.   Ahhh yes, it has now come back to me. I will write about dreams and goals in a separate blog post instead. 

So, I recommend keeping a notebook with a pen and I recommend against all the fancy notebooks in all the world. I also recommend against your smartphone, but all of this is eclipsed by “whatever works.”  I have crap tons of notes on my phone in various places which are searchable.  So this is important. because when I want to remember what movie I want to watch I can just search my movie list. Instead of the dreaded 30 minutes of “What do you want to watch-let’s ask the algorithm on each god forsaken streaming platform instead?”

Write things down, not so you can see them later but so your brain will hold onto them.  Also though, write things down because one day in a decade you will be so glad you did. This blog is a great example of this.

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