Friday, December 27, 2019

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.

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