Sidhuvud

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12 Jan

Dig where you stand and take what you have


Datum: 2010-01-12 08:30
A shovel half shoved into the earth. Behind it - grass.

I have a pen­chant for always hav­ing some­thing with me to write or record in. It can be a note­book or a stack of index cards.

Ideas come from … nowhere?

At least for me, ideas are volatile. As I mull some­thing over while lead­ing my every­day life, I get a moment of total lucid­i­ty. Sud­den­ly, it is quite clear how I should design that par­tic­u­lar work­shop so that the rhythm is per­fect, so that one top­ic leads to anoth­er in a nat­ur­al way. For my inner vision, I see clear­ly what slides I will show and what to say to accom­pa­ny them.

And, they dis­ap­pear easily

I know from bit­ter expe­ri­ence that when this hap­pens, it is urgent for me to write it down. Soon enough, some­thing will dis­tract me and then every­thing might disappear.

But, some­times I do not have at hand the note­book that I always want with me, so then I grab what I have in my proximity.

Saved by a cardboard

This week­end, was unpack­ing cof­fee pods for our new Nespres­so machine when such a moment of clar­i­ty struck. Quick­ly, I sketched down my idea on what I was hold­ing at the moment, name­ly the box itself. (Isn’t the card­board some­what dec­o­ra­tive after all?)

A piece of cardboard with idea scriblings on it.

So, if your ideas are as volatile as mine, take what you have right where you are and sketch away.

The impor­tant thing is not that you write the ideas down in the right place, but that you let the sticky note/​carton/​magazine page bounce in your inbox and that you decide what the next step is, i.e. define the to-do task, that is the start of real­iz­ing the idea.

Where do you pre­fer to record your ideas? Tell me!


But, when you have captured your ideas before they disappear - where do you keep them?

I have eight suggestions for a parking lot for your ideas.