Tips for Capturing Ideas on the Go

There is this one habit that has made me a 10x better writer, thinker, and learner in the past 3 years. Here it is. 🧠 CAPTURING & CONNECTING IDEAS EFFECTIVELY 🧠 Let me share a brief anecdote. Do you know someone named Niklas Luhmann? He was one of the most prolific sociologists of the 20th century. In a career spanning 50 years, he published 400 papers and 70 books. Yes. He published MORE than one book a year on average during his career. How? By capturing and connecting ideas effectively. I can vouch for this after 3 years of doing this (almost) consistently. In 3 years, I’ve managed to publish 2 books (each spanning 90,000 words), 50+ articles, 10+ short guides, and write hundreds of thousands of words that are unpublished. There are 3 steps to this habit: ✅ MAKE IDEA CAPTURE RIDICULOUSLY SIMPLE You have at least one good idea every day. Probably 5 or more if you really count it. But, it gets lost like clouds in the sky. Unless… you capture it immediately. To do that, you need to make the process ridiculously simple. Write down a quick note on your Apple Notes. Send yourself an email. Record a voice note. It doesn’t matter. JUST CAPTURE IT. ✅ FUNNEL ALL IDEAS INTO ONE PLACE Most people do #1. But, they stop there, sadly. You probably have 100s of Evernote pages you’ve never visited in years. Or, voice notes that are lost in the couch cushions of yesterday. That’s okay. You can switch gears now. Spend just ONE hour each week collecting your ideas into a SINGLE repository. My recommendation? Use an app like Roam Research, Obsidian, or @TiddyWiki that lets you connect ideas. Don’t use Google Docs, OneNote or Evernote. Because otherwise, your ideas will remain that: just ideas. ✅ START CONNECTING IDEAS TO CREATE SOMETHING! Niklas Luhmann had to manually combine thousands of index cards to connect his ideas. Thanks to technology, your job is 1000x easier. You just need to dump your ideas into one of the aforementioned apps, add hashtags, & start spotting connections. You won’t see results right away. It takes months. But it will happen. And one day, you’ll look back and revel at the simple ideas you had that led to marvelous breakthroughs :) ... If this helped, please re-share so it helps more people! 🙏 Finally, if you’re an immigrant in America, join 8000+ who get my weekly newsletter packed w resources like this: https://lnkd.in/gPk2_XaR :) #writing #writer #author #unshackled #admitted #ideas #habit

Here's a simple habit that will exponentially increase the quality and consistency of your content, programs, and client work. It's the same advice I gave recently to a client while working on her new group program. We were inventorying her existing content, assets, and intellectual property. She was getting noticeably frustrated with herself. "I've developed so many brilliant ideas and frameworks...but I've forgotten all of them. Things come to me when I teach and coach people live, but I never write them down." 🧠 Don't Lose Track of Your Best Stuff 🧠 When I was a songwriter, I learned never to squander an idea for a lyric, melody, or beat. When I captured it (no matter how small it may seem), let it percolate, and patiently waited for it to grow and find its place in a song, I wrote better songs more frequently. As coaches and consultants, it's important to develop habits and systems for capturing, refining, organizing, and referencing our ideas. Some of your best ideas will show up when you are in the heart of the action, helping your clients. Inspiration will hit to teach a new way, explain something with more precision and impact, or approach an objective more effectively. ⚡️ Harness Your Genius ⚡️ When you get off of calls with clients or your ideal potential clients, take a moment to jot down a few bullet points or record a voice memo on your phone about any strokes of brilliance that come up. Or consider if something about that call could be easily adapted into content, a framework, or an example to strengthen your content and coaching in the future. Don't let your unique genius come and go without being recognized and captured. 😓 Otherwise, you're working harder than you need to. 😓 Building an impactful and profitable business and brand takes a lot of work. Don't make it harder by losing track of work and thinking you're already doing. Just be sure you include enough detail so that you can make sense of it later. Otherwise, you end up with a note like this with no other context... 🦫 "Think more like a beaver" 🦫 I remember saying that to a client. I remember it was inspired by a Tik Tok of a cute beaver I saw earlier in the day. Sadly, I don't recall how I applied the beaver's behavior to business. 🤷🏻♂️ Let's hope it comes back to me. Decide today how you will capture your genius when it strikes. Make it a habit. --- Have you ever left a hilarious note for yourself and had no idea what it meant? What do you think "think more like a beaver" might mean? :) #contentcreation #signaturemethod #coaching #habits

Coming up with content ideas is the biggest hurdle I hear about, but it’s actually the easiest to solve. Try this method of capturing ideas and You might be surprised at how many ideas you have. First, why this works (and what you’re doing now doesn’t): The human brain likes shortcuts— Predefined processes for handling situations. Consider your home. Everything has a place. Your silverware has a drawer. Your towels have a cabinet. What would happen if they didn’t? Imagine that every time you had something to put away, you piled them in a corner of your living room. The pile just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Just imagining it creates stress. It builds overwhelm. Now, imagine trying to throw a party with that pile of stuff sitting in the corner. That’s what you’re doing with your ideas. Idea generation is one process. Implementing them is another. When you try to combine these, you get stuck. This is what most people do. They try to think of an idea while it needs to be produced. And everything grinds to a halt. One of the most productive shifts in content marketing is separating idea generation from content production. Every time I’ve built a system or workflow for content production, it's been a game changer. A good idea generation workflow needs to be: → One single place to hold all the ideas. → Accessible to you anytime, anywhere. → Easy to open and close — and document your idea — without disrupting what you’re doing. Start there. Create an ideas doc or task list. I’ve built these in Notion, Airtable, and Google Docs. Build whatever works for you. But whatever you choose, make sure there’s an app you can install on your phone to meet the "accessible anytime, anywhere" requirement. Don’t create sublists. Don’t have Post-it notes. Don’t create one list on your phone and one on your computer. You’re adding clutter, chaos, and stress. Over time, that one list will require organization. When you start to feel like you need categories or groups for the ideas, it’ll be time for more structure. But for now: Create one List. Remember, your Ideas List is always there, and it only takes seconds to write your ideas down. Start paying attention to the ideas that pop into your head. Then, write them down in your one single list. Every time. Repeat as the ideas come. I think you’ll be surprised at just how often that is. 🗨️ Comment below: How often do you think ideas come to you right now? Never? Every once in a while? Daily? Be sure to 👍 this post if you'd like me to share each of the next steps in the workflow with easy ways to get started.

“When a task gives me a nasty adrenaline spike, I remind myself to start writing.” wrote Jenny Wood in her book "Wild Courage". As a fellow Googler, I could relate. Google encourages bias to action and nothing says action quite like creating an artifact. A doc. A draft. A humble beginning of every transformational impact. I’ve said many times to my team, friends and colleagues: ➡️ "An idea in your mind is ephemeral. On paper, it becomes your first prototype." Writing is a human superpower. So when I came across The New Yorker article “The End of the Essay,” it stopped me in my tracks. In the author’s words: “[Students today] have grown up at a time when society values high-speed takes, not the slow deliberation of critical thinking.” In the era of AI, are we losing our collective ability to write? My take: we don’t have to. With intention, we can use every tool, from pencil and paper to AI, to sharpen our thinking. Here are my three go-to hacks when any problem, big or small, at work or in personal life, feels overwhelming: ✅ Sketch it by hand (Tool: pencil and paper) The New Yorker notes that "the embodied experience of handwriting activates cognitive pathways that typing doesn’t reach". ✅ Talk it out loud (Tool: dictation apps like Wispr Flow) When your thoughts are bubbling up too fast, reduce the cognitive load by saying them aloud. Dictation captures your messy ideas before they disappear (after all, they're ephemeral until written down). ✅ Sweat it out (Tool: your body and its movement that brings joy) For me, that’s ideally skiing (if only it wasn't a seasonal sport). Stanford University research shows walking boosts activity in the brain’s default mode network, increasing creative output by up to 60%. When you're stuck, go for a walk. (I did a lot of walking meetings while at Google!) 🍒 Treat AI as one of many tools in your creative toolbox. For example, you can combine my 2nd and 3rd tip by going for a walk AND talking to OpenAI's ChatGPT at the same time. Not only will the app capture your thoughts, it can also help organize them for you. Use AI to augment your strengths (like when your creativity outpaces your typing speed) and overcome your weaknesses (like procrastination rooted in perfectionism). What's your favorite way to "get unstucked"? #WildCourage #Writing #AI #Creativity #Neuroscience #BiasToAction #Prototyping

𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐢𝐩 𝐓𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲! 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺: You have amazing ideas, all the time – not necessarily when you’re near your desk. Can you capture ideas “on the go” and automatically get them over to your favorite app? 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:  Yes, you can! Voice commands using Amazon’s Alexa app are an easy way. ⒈ Connect Alexa to Zapier. ⒉ Set up a “trigger phrase” (like “New Idea”). This is how Alexa will know to start the automation, versus every other voice command. ⒊ Connect your favorite app, like Todoist or Notion. Or you could even have a running Google Doc of your ideas. ⒋ Zapier will create a task or to-do in that app, so you can revisit it later. You can use this automation to add ideas anywhere that has an Alexa device or app — in your home, on your phone, or even in your car. Never lose an idea again! - Hi, I’m Nathan, a process and automation expert. ⚡️ I help people maximize productivity. I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses, helping them save time and boost revenue - and I can help you too! #automation #workflow #productivity

I logged 223 ideas, or as I like to call them — sparks ⚡️— in 2023. This translates to a spark about every 1.5 days. Sparks are unformed thoughts or inspiration that I capture immediately before I lose them. I use Apple Notes for this practice since it’s available on all my devices and easy to capture. I analyzed all my sparks using Claude AI to identify key themes and emerging content pillars. Here’s what it came up with: 🌀 Generative practices (trance, AI art, free writing) 🧱 Overcoming creative blocks 💪 Building creative confidence ❤️ Fostering creative teams and culture 🎨 Creativity coaching and facilitation Wow!! This really helped to see this particular body of work come to life, and now I have oodles of inspiration for the coming year. If you don’t have an idea (or spark) capturing habit, I *highly recommend* you consider making this a priority for 2024. Find a system that works for you. That could be a small notebook that you carry with you, an email to yourself, or even a voice note. Experiment with it and see what sticks! I promise, if you don’t catch it, it will disappear as quickly as it arrived. If you’re lucky, it might turn up later when you are taking a shower or engaging in some other type of low-focus activity, but you can’t count on it (trust me). We all have access to an infinite well of creativity. Most of us are not tapping into it. Surprise yourself this year and see what you discover! Remember, YOU ARE CREATIVE! #creativity #ideas #inspiration #creativeblocks #generative

Have you ever experienced the frustration of a brilliant idea slipping away just as quickly as it came to you? That "Aha!" moment that vanishes into thin air before you can even grasp it? It's a common plight many of us face, but fear not - there's a solution! Picture this: you're out for a morning walk, and suddenly, inspiration strikes. You can practically taste the brilliance of the idea on the tip of your tongue, but try as you might, it slips away, lost in the abyss of forgetfulness. You might have believed that a good idea would stick with you if it was truly valuable, but the truth is, good ideas are fleeting creatures, often inspired by exposure and boredom. Unless they are captured and nurtured, they may be lost forever. But fret not, my friend, for I have a remedy for this all-too-common dilemma: a robust note-taking flow. When those precious ideas come to you, do not let them escape into the void. Capture them in your notes, whether through a digital tool like Drafts, the simplicity of Apple Notes, or the trusty pen and paper method. The key is to track and organize these ideas diligently. At the end of your workday, take a moment to review and organize your notes. By maintaining this practice consistently over a month, you will witness a profound transformation in the quality of your thinking and ideas. Ideas will spark new ideas, connections will form, and creativity will flow like never before.