Don't let your ideas be forgotten
When we desperately need ideas, nothing comes to us. Facing a blank page, being uncertain about how to respond to a problem, or picking the perfect gift for a person are great examples of situations that demand more from us than a generic answer. The pressure won’t make things easier.
The matter goes beyond whether we are being creative or not. The muse, or inspiration, comes in unexpected places, and many of us don’t see what is in plain sight.
How many times have we said that we will remember an idea later, or discard it because it's not original or good enough? Then we forget it.
To keep our ideas from being forever gone, we must come up with a way to keep and use them when we need to give clever solutions to our circumstances.
The fleeting muse
Ideas take many forms; when we come up with a project, the things we believe, how we think things should be, starting something new, something catching our eye, a moment, an emotion, a thought, a concept, or a design.
We are flesh and bones, but we are also a million ideas made solid.
Many of our problems require that we give innovative ideas or answers. The obstacles we are facing may need a new tactic, we may want to give a thoughtful gift to surprise another person, or we may want to create something that does not fit any label.
We can certainly think hard about our situation and come up with options. Yet, the most singular and brilliant ideas appear unexpectedly. Something clicks. We are not looking for them. We are walking, talking, reading, anything but searching. We, for exhaustion or instinct, give space for the idea to appear.
It can happen anytime, and we have ideas all the time. Some of them are original, and others are products of inspiration.
As fascinating as an eureka moment can be, ideas are fleeting, and since we can’t predict when they pop up or our disposition towards them, we can lose them.
Easily forgotten ideas
We can find new ideas everywhere, but we may not be receptive to them all the time.
We can be wasting our ideas in many ways. Perhaps we underestimate their influence, and we don’t pay attention. We may be in the middle of an activity, swimming, being part of a serious discussion, or in a situation that, whether for joy or sorrow, we are feeling more than thinking, and later the fruits of our minds are forever gone. It may be that we just find a lot of buts. Not realistic, or good enough. It is not what I’m used to. It escapes what I’m comfortable with.
Ideas are easy to forget when we don’t care, when we are doing something else, or when we simply discard them.
As these products of our minds are so crucial to the way we see and interact with the world, and how to respond to events in our lives, we need more than merely keeping them. We need a way to hunt them down.
Put ideas where you can find them
Regardless of when they happen or what we think of them, we have to save every single idea we have.
Inspiration can come from anywhere; we can’t predict when these products of our mind pop up. So, we need an extension for our minds, like a second brain, that is always at hand to secure them. A pocket notebook would be ideal, but we can use any app on our phones to take notes, even a chat on WhatsApp with ourselves. Our goal is to have a record we can later consult, and also make it impossible for ideas to slip away.
On some occasions, we can’t nor shouldn’t write immediately. It comes to mind the discussion example, where suddenly writing something down is just out of place, it can express what our minds are elsewhere. Reminding ourselves how forgetful we can be, along with the preparation and commitment to write our ideas, is enough to influence our relationship with our ideas in the right direction.
Filtering our ideas is crucial to finding the best, but we must leave that process for later. Even if today the fruits of our minds seem impossible or don’t meet our criteria, we have no idea what tomorrow brings, or what information we may need, and so our opinion may change as well. Perhaps tomorrow we will see what we today failed to appreciate. Thus, the importance of having them all at hand.
By having a place to keep our second brain and postponing the judgment of our ideas, we will never be empty-handed. Not only this, but we also exercise our ability to produce them and have a better eye to discover them.
Keep every idea you have
Not every idea will be revolutionary. Some of them will be bad, and others will be good. Yet, we will have more fun and a higher chance of discovering a great one if we capture every single one we have.
Save your precious ideas from being forgotten. Have close wherever you write them down. And, in every moment of your life, keep an eye out for ideas. Let’s listen to that voice that points out things we find wonderful.
We are always finding ideas. When we need them to fill a blank page, or how to respond to problems, we can work with something out of the box. It may not be outstanding, but while we work on them, better ideas are on their way.
