Your head is not the most efficient place to store ideas, lists, etc.
Write everything down in your external hard drive, otherwise you’ll lose it. This includes all thoughts, notes, ideas, etc. It’s not only the to do items that occupy valuable mind space. We need to capture those ideas elsewhere so we can clear our mind for creativity. Give ourselves a blank canvas.
- Wake up and capture your thoughts right away. Otherwise you’ll lose them. I realized that when writing this book – every day I would wake up with an idea because I programmed my subconscious mind to think about it overnight. And I’d immediately have another idea because one idea leads to another. Ideas beget ideas. So, I tried to grab my computer right away and capture the idea before losing it. But you need a better way to capture ideas quickly. And not just when you’re writing a book. All the time.
- How many thoughts can you hold in your mind at once? Remember Donald Trump’s “person, man, woman, camera, TV” test that he mentioned in a nationally televised interview? That was likely a test for dementia or alzheimer’s. Most of us can hold a few thoughts in our head at once, but as we encounter other stimuli, those thoughts are harder and harder to hold. So don’t do it. Store them externally.
- Another reason for having an external hard drive is because there are actually things that we do need to memorize in life and it’s easier to do that if the things we don’t need to memorize are not stored in our heads.
- When you’re out driving around or shopping, that is also good thinking time. Much of this book was dictated into the notes on my iPhone as ideas came to me in the grocery store or the car.
- Momentum / inertia: an object in motion tends to stay in motion. Once you have started thinking about something, whether it’s content for a book your to do list, etc., you tend to keep thinking about it. But you can only do this if you clear the ideas you’ve already had out of your head and then have a way to capture new ideas.
- Another great time for gathering and dictating your thoughts is on a road trip. That’s one of the reasons that I like driving alone.
- Insomnia is not the only problem with trying to remember things. We can only hold so many items in our head at once, so if we’re trying to focus on remembering one or more things, we can’t focus on thinking about something else. We have to get it out of our heads.
- Remembering can be a challenging task. When I’m running, I actually try to remember my split times in my head rather than using a watch that keeps track of it for me. The reason is because trying to remember my times keeps my mind off the pain.
- If we’re going to use capture tools, our tool has to be easily accessible – in front of us and open.