33 Ways to Stay Creative: Carry a Notebook Everywhere

I’ll Make a Note of That

The second item on the List of 33 is “Carry a Notebook Everywhere.”

Have you ever had a great idea that you didn’t write down and then forgot? Yep, so have I. The idea behind carrying a notebook everywhere is that you have a ready-made place to keep all your ideas, observations, plans, dreams, etc. Notebooks come in a variety of styles, sizes, covers, and so on, so you can have one that fits your personality (or you can keep a generic notebook if you have no personality). There are many self-help gurus and business development advocates who include this idea at the top of their suggestions for people who want to move ahead in life, business, or what have you. Writing things down, again, is a great way to make sure you don’t lose that million-dollar idea.

Carrying a notebook fits in very well with the first idea, making lists. A notebook is a great place to keep lists, as it is much harder to lose than random slips of paper. Notebooks can also be used for brainstorming and exploring those ideas that you put on your list. You can take a list and then dedicate a page (or a portion of a page) to each idea. This is where you overcome that question of “What do I do with all those list ideas?” Now you can take an idea and see where it might lead you or what else it might connect to.

Along with being a repository for lists and explorations of said lists, a notebook is a great place for longer musings. You can make long-term/long-range plans for anything from projects to vacations to redecorating (which in of itself can be quite a project). If your creativity runs to long-form writing (such as longer stories, extended blog posts and the like), you can use the notebook to help you develop these writings. You can keep background information and drafts all in one place - your notebook.

My business partner always carries a notebook with him when he goes out, which is used for all of the aforementioned purposes. Not a meeting goes by that he does not have it out to jot down what projects we have going, what clients we need to contact or create for, or whatever else comes up in our discussions. He has a huge collection of these notebooks from years of jotting down these ideas. This also provides a repository of ideas that he can always go back and look over when trying to work out a current challenge. How did we do something in the past? It is probably in one of his notebooks.

But herein lies one challenge of notebooks - organization. If you write a lot of unrelated ideas in your notebook, you need to figure out how to organize it so you can find the one idea you want. Thumbing through the pages of your notebook can be just as frustrating as rifling through stacks of lists in search of the one that contains the nugget you desire. And then you reach the level of my partner, where you may have not one or two but perhaps as many as a dozen notebooks (many of our great writers had stacks of notebooks full of ideas lying around). Do you catalog them by date? This can be helpful, but what if you don’t know when you came up with an idea? Catalog by topic? Unfortunately, most people have multiple topics in any given notebook. At least you know it’s somewhere.

Another challenge of notebooks is the simple fact that you have to carry it around. Now we have to deal with size of said notebook. Do you want a nice, small notebook that you can stick in a pocket (pants or backpack), a purse, or computer bag? The problem now is that you have a SMALL notebook that will probably fill up quickly (unless your handwriting would require the average person to employ a magnifying glass to read), and you will eventually have perhaps dozens of these lying around if you are a prolific writer. How about a large notebook? Well, now you have to carry it around separately, unless you can fit it into some sort of (large) bag. And if it is difficult to carry around, there is a good chance you’re going to have those days you just say the heck with it and don’t bring it. Of course, that will be the day you get that brilliant plan to take over the world (again, just pondering here) - you know, the one that will be long gone by the time you get home to write it down.

In the end, you have to be the one to decide whether the benefits of a notebook outweigh the costs in terms of organization and portability. I personally use notebooks only rarely, mostly because my hands don’t do well with prolonged writing (at least with typing I can alternate thumbs for spacing, which are what tire out first). However, I do try to have several medium-small notebooks that I generally dedicate to different categories (teaching ideas, business notes, personal). With the proliferation of smartphones, many people now keep notes there, or use them to access their online files.

Finally, if all else fails, you can always use that notebook as a fly swatter.

33 Ways to Stay Creative: Make Lists

Let’s Get this List Started

Appropriate to this exercise of evaluating a list of ways to stay creative is the first one on the list: Make Lists

Most people make lists all the time. Grocery lists, to-do lists, honey-do lists, top-ten lists, and the list goes on (literally). We seem to think in lists, and this can be both a good thing and a not-so-good thing (I won’t exactly call it a “bad” thing). So for the first item in this list, let’s look at what is good about lists and what is not, and I promise not to write it as a list. After all, this is supposed to be a series of explorations into the ideas on the original list.

What are some of the good things about making lists? Well, first of all, making a list gives you a place you can collect and organize things that are on your mind. Again, this might be a list of things you need to buy at the store (how often have you gotten home and thought, crap, I forgot bread/soap/whatever?), great story ideas, ways to take over the world (just pondering here), or any number of other lists. Lists are also handy for prioritizing things that you may need or want to do (chores, sites to see on vacation, etc.). In general, lists are easy to make. All you need is something to write on and with and a general idea of what you are interested in.

How can lists help you be more creative? As I mentioned, you can use lists to keep track of all those ideas that pop into your mind. You can have separate lists for different topics, and you can compare those lists to see where ideas overlap. Having things in front of you visually helps you see the connections, the directions and the missing elements. Unless you are some type of savant, more than likely you are going to forget some of the ideas or idea elements that you come up with. Writing them in a list gives you a place to return to when you can’t remember that missing piece.

[Side Note: I teach English, and one thing I always teach my students, no matter their age/level, is how to outline their writing ideas. An outline is really nothing more than an organized list with various levels of importance. I have had adult students come back later and tell me how much this helped them in their later courses.]

In my non-teaching life, I work with a partner in media. One of our standard operating procedures (SOPs) is making lists of projects, ideas, challenges, and whatever else might come up. We make lists of clients we need to do work for; we make lists of items we need for a particular project. These lists are very handy, and since they are virtual, we can revisit them whenever we have a similar project/challenge/whatever.

Now what are some of the downsides of lists? Maybe one of the biggest challenges is that lists get lost. Have you ever made a shopping list and then left it on the table when you went out? Or maybe you had that great list of ideas but forgot where you put it. Physical lists are great, but they fall victim to being misplaced all too easily. Virtual/online lists have the advantage of being easy to catalog, but the downside is that all too often we do the same thing virtually that we do physically - we make the list and then forget where we put it. Have you ever been guilty of this? I know I have more times than I want to admit.

Another downside is the question - What do I do with this list now that I have it? Or a related question - Where do I start with this list? Obviously, a shopping list has neither of these problems (other than which aisle on which to begin), but often your idea lists are not so easy to work through. This is where you need to start prioritizing the items on your list. How do you prioritize? Well, that (for better or worse) is up to you.

I could very likely go on with both the pros and cons of making lists, but this is not supposed to be an all-encompassing exercise, merely some of my random thoughts about the items on the original list. Overall, I think lists are a great way to get the creative juices flowing, or at least provide the “fertilizer” you need to get ideas to grow.

These are some of my thoughts about lists. What are yours? Feel free to comment with your take on the idea of lists (but please remember to keep things polite).

The Recovering Teacher Returns

It has been more than five long years since I wrote my first and only post on this blog. For too long have I remained idle while the world passed by. Idle while the world has changed and been rearranged. Idle while others have moved forward. That changes now...I think.

First some background. I have not been completely idle since I last posted. I became a full-time middle school teacher once again in 2014, after several years of teaching as an adjunct instructor at a now-defunct technical college. Returning to the classroom full time was a definite change, and it took up the majority of my time for a couple of years. I then returned to my side gig in media, which filled up what little time was left. I now finally feel ready to return to writing on a limited basis, with hopes of eventually being able to devote more of my energies to writing short- and long-form pieces.

With all this in mind, I went searching for a topic to focus my initial writing efforts. I have been playing around for some years with a couple of novel ideas, one mytho-historical and one fantasy, but neither one lends itself to blogging. I also have some short story ideas I have worked on, but again, they are a bit long for this format. So the search went on for something to inspire the creative juices, and finally it happened.

Some time back I read an article about “33 Ways to Stay Creative.” Actually, it was little more than a list of ideas with no real discussion as to the pros or cons of each method. What made these 33 ways useful, or were they even? Could they be useful for one person and useless for another (I’m pretty sure most people would say yes to that). My goal, then, is to take one or two ideas for a blog post, examine them, and give my own thoughts based on my decades of life experience (I won’t say how many, but it is enough for a decent view of life).

So here I stand at the beginning of a series of posts about these 33 ways. I welcome your feedback, thoughts, suggestions, etc. Forgive me if I choose not to follow any of them; this is my blog, after all. So, without further ado (or much ado about nothing - my apologies, William), I jump into an examination of the 33 Ways to Stay Creative - with my next post.