Write It Down

I mentioned in my last post about constantly having ideas, which if I'm not careful quickly dissapear without trace into the void that is my brain.

For that very reason, I usually carry some kind of notebook and a pen around with me. The size of which depends on what I'm doing and where I'm going.
Of course, these days a mobile phone can be very useful for the same purpose. So I also find myself jotting down 'notes', or recording voice memo's into the phone. The wonders of modern technology eh?

I've been doing this for a few years now and it's amazing how much 'stuff' you can commit to paper, or phone, over time. I am currently well into my second bigger notebook, as well as still using my smaller version too.

After all, you never know when inspiration may strike and, as often happens, it can hit at the most unlikely and inappropriate moments. So having a means of making a note about that great world changing idea, or thought, is very useful

I sometimes find that, when making those notes, they can almost turn into a kind of blog post as the idea grows and expands before your eyes and your pen is frantically trying to keep up with your thought process. In fact I've been known to fill up a whole sheet of A4 paper with scribbling, before transferring the salient points to the 'proper' notebook.

(I've just noticed that I actually have another four notebooks, with loads of video ideas in them, sitting just to the side of me on my computer desk. I'd forgotten all about them, as they are several years old now and are a bit of a leftover from the days when I used to make several YouTube videos a week. I know what I'm going to be doing after finishing writing this post....)

Looking back through those books can make very interesting reading (see above).
I have notes about ideas for long abandoned schemes, websites, and apps, quotes I've heard, or read, titles of books to be read, or music to be listened to and much more.
The original ideas for both the Pierless Music website/service and The Stinger magazine can be found within those pages for example.

Keeping those old notebooks for future reference can be very rewarding too, as you never know when one of those abandoned ideas may be resurrected. Sometimes ideas are written down that you know you don't have the time for, or can commit the effort to, at that moment. So the books become a kind of storage area, ready to be accessed when the time is right.

In fact, that exact thing happened to me yesterday.
I had a meeting with somebody and during the course of the discussion I mentioned an idea I'd had a year or so ago. The idea was favourably received and the upshot of this is that I'm now going to look again into the possibilities of getting that idea off the ground, literally.
When I originally jotted that idea down, I didn't really think it was viable, rather more of a pie in the sky scheme. I did some intial research and then turned the page and went onto something else.

I was reminded of another, partly forgotten, scheme recently as well. It's one of those that I don't have the time to take any further right now, but at least all the notes and original thoughts are still there, waiting to be acted upon at some time, maybe.

So you never know. And if there's a lesson to be learned here it's that jotting those ideas, schemes and thoughts down may seem like a waste of time, and a bit of hassle, but you just never know when they may come in handy. And if you don't write them down, you can be sure that you'd never remember them again.

I know I'm very pleased that I've taken the time and made the effort to do just that over the years.

How about you?