Trust me, you'll forget it

Just do it.. you will forget it. It literally takes less than 3 minutes to write your idea down. You can even record a voice note and have it sent to your email in 30 seconds...(That's an app called Braindrop)

“The brain is a thinking tool, not a storing tool”

Inspiration strikes add the oddest most uncomfortable moments, most of the time at least, and you have to be ready for it. If you own a smartphone there is no excuse to forget about anything that comes into you brain.

Aside from the fact that you might forget it, the importance of capturing your ideas or thoughts immediately is so you can free up your brain to actually focus on the things it wants to focus on. Whenever a thought comes into your head that you don't write down into a system that you trust, you brain keeps and open loop. It is working in the background, trying to not forget what you thought about and most importantly trying to close that loop, handle that task, capture that idea. So whenever you are trying to focus it is crucial that you have a space where you can write down your ideas/thoughts/tasks/inspirations that might pop up in your head. This what I call a "Distraction Sheet." A place where you capture all of those thoughts immediately so you can get back to work.

The Tools

There are many tools you can use to actually capture your ideas. The trick, however, is that you put it into a system that you trust. If your brain doesn't trust that you will refer back to that system it will not close that loop, because it thinks that is still needs to be handled.

So think about what system you might actually trust, where are you constantly going to be referring to?

YOUR BULLET JOURNAL

If you have one that you constantly reference to make your plans, journal your thoughts and basically handle your life this is a great option for capturing your ideas! You can create spreads specifically designated for this like a distraction sheet or a brain-dump spread.

YOUR PHONE

There are many apps you can use to capture your ideas. My personal favorite is Google Keep. It allows you to write small notes, add images, voice notes, drawings, to-do lists and keeps everything in a dashboard so you can clearly see all your notes. Most importantly, it allows you to categorize and color code your notes as well. This is my favorite place to jot down whatever is going through my head.

You can also use your preferred Notes App for this as well. Even your favorite to-do list manager if it's a task that you want to write down. The most important thing is that it is somewhere you can actually trust.