Stop taking so many notes. It’s a habit that grants the illusion of productivity while sapping the true thing/killing your true muse. There’s a better option.
Notes are where ideas go to die. Sharing an idea simultaneously keeps it alive and clarifies it. The soft way to do this is via conversation, the hard way is via written or recorded word. Posts and Articles keep ideas alive, but only if you have a system for reliably ensuring that a draft doesn’t simply turn into another note doomed to spend eternity in a digital attic.
The best time to share an idea is when you just had it. There are at least three reasons for this. It is when:
- You are most excited about it. This excitement will come across to your audience and it will motivate you to think about the idea more and complete the sharing process.
- You will best explain it. It is hard for our minds to conceptualize NOT understanding something complex that we understand well. When each little piece comes together to form a functionally interconnected whole, it becomes harder to consciously think of every disparate piece that was required to get you there. This is why expert physicists generally make poor high school science teachers. The best time to create an “ah hah!” moment in someone else that will help them across a bridge of understanding is when you can still see both sides of the chasm.
- You will actually share it. If you don’t share it now, you likely never will. This is especially true for those who consume large amounts of information across varied topics, and thus have a tendency of having ideas at a faster rate than they can ever get out. The only way to stop this is to be disciplined about maintaining a balance between inputs and outputs. This often involves stopping reading or listening to something in the middle and not letting yourself go back to it until you write your idea down. When you do so, it cannot be in short hand, or it will simply become another note.
And