Secrets to Organizing
Thoughts and Ideas (So You’ll Never Lose Ideas!)
Have you ever become aware of your thoughts?
I mean truly aware. If so, you’ll probably have noticed that they’re
disordered, disorganized and racing rapidly around your mind. Imagine if you
could harness this and control it for your benefit!
This article aims to give you advice on
organizing thoughts and ideas, providing you seven tools to help you decrease
the chances of losing your ideas and make the most of them.
It’s helpful to think of each point as
successive steps along the way.
Here’re 7 simple steps you should start trying
on how to organize your thoughts:
1.
Keep a notebook in your car
Ideas seem to be able to come at any time.
You need to be ready for this. As such it can be a great idea to keep notebooks
in places where inspiration may appear.
It’s as the film maker Noah Baumbach once
said
“I find a lot of writing happens when you’re
not actually at the computer. So I carry a notebook”
Your car is a prime location to keep one.
Suddenly grabbing a notebook when driving can
be extremely dangerous however. So if you have a method to record your voice
while driving this is a great and safe substitute.
Alternatively, just keep driving until you
find a safe place to pull over and write your idea down.
2.
Keep a pen and paper on your bedside table
You probably know that your dreams aren’t
just randomly occurring, each dream we have can tell us something about our
subconsciousness, the meanings behind our thoughts and feelings.
Therefore it can be a good idea to be aware
of your dreams, and with it, write down anything significant about them that
springs to mind.
Our dreams are easily forgot, therefore
keeping a notebook can be a great way to harness your mind when it’s at this
extremely creative period.
Even when you’re not dreaming, lying down
trying to sleep can often let your mind wander freely bringing your ideas to
focus. This can be quite annoying if you’re actually trying
to sleep.
Keeping a notebook beside your bed can both
help you note down your ideas ensuring you won’t forget them. As you’ve written
you idea down, you don’t need to waste your energy trying to ensure you
remember them. This might help you get to sleep faster.
3.
Don’t organize the ideas as you jot them down at first
When you’re writing down your ideas, it can
be tempting to ensure they’re written in an organized, ordered fashion. Fight
this urge.
When you’re noting your ideas, you might find
more and more ideas come at you. Taking time to ensure they’re immediately well
organized can slow you down.
By all means, come back to your notes and
organize them. But this shouldn’t be your priority at first.
4.
Compile your ideas in one place (e.g. use apps like Evernote)
All of the points above are about the vital
moments to catch and keep an idea before it goes. However, that isn’t enough.
Your ideas need to be easily accessible.
As such, it is a great idea to keep your
notes and ideas in a single place.
It’s great having all of your ideas down. But
having them written in different places or formats can become a hindrance.
Copy your notes and have them in a single
location. This can be a separate notebook but there are a number of great Apps
which allow you to keep and store your notes right on your computer or
smartphone. I recommend Evernote.
You might find ideas written in one place
relate to another one written. Plus revisiting your notes can be a great way to
bring them back to your mind, perhaps inspiring more and better ideas.
5.
Organize your ideas
Now that your ideas are compiled, it’s time
to organize them in a way that is helpful and easy to understand.
One quick and easy way to organize your ideas
is to categorize them.
You might have noticed some of your ideas are
linked or related thematically. Consider what links them them note them under
this idea. If you have many ideas, you could even make subcategories.
For example, if you’re a fiction writer, you
could group some of your ideas under “Stories” and the form you think the story
should be told: a drama script, a novel, or short story etc. Then with separate
subgroups for genre such as historical fiction or sci-fi.
With this, you can develop on ideas in a way
that is quick and efficient.
6.
Kill your darlings
Once you’ve got all your ideas written down
and organized. It’s time for the real work to begin — to figure out what ideas
to keep and what ideas to get rid of.
“Kill your darlings” is an important advice
for writers. It means that you have to get rid of your most “precious” ideas
and words.
Not all ideas are equal. In your notes, there
could be a truly brilliant original idea but the chances of them all being like
this are unfortunately slim. There is no point wasting your time on an idea
that will never work.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to tell which
of your ideas are great and which are not. Trusting your gut can be a good way,
talking to people about your ideas and seeing how they react can also be a good
idea.
If you aren’t sure how to decide if an idea
is good enough, take a look at this guide:
5 Ways To Find Out If Your Idea Is
Worth Pursuing
Remember to get rid of your emotions
surrounding your ideas and approach them in an honest and objective way.
Once you’ve trimmed your ideas down to the
very best, you can work on making them a reality.
7.
Make your ideas actionable
You could have an amazing idea for something
but if you don’t work on your ideas, nothing happens.
You need to start making your ideas a reality.
Make them actionable.
A great way to do this is to approach each
idea in turn and ask yourself the following questions:
- How can I make this relevant to my everyday
life?
- Which ideas would be most beneficial to act on
today and why?
- Is there a common theme emerging here? If so,
how could I combine these ideas together to make them more powerful?
These questions enable you to work out which
idea is most actionable and what idea you should first start working on.
With the above seven steps in mind, you’ll be
able to master your ideas making potential.
With them, your thoughts and feelings can be
utilized to boost your productivity.
Leon Ho
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/10-ways-organize-your-thoughts-and-never-lose-ideas-again.html
No comments:
Post a Comment