Keeping Your Ideas Nov20

Keeping Your Ideas

Developing ideas is hard. Ideas are fleeting things difficult to pin down. They are ephemeral and can slip through our grasp at any time. As such one of more important things we can do is record and work on our ideas. Finding a medium to do so is entirely a personal choice. Some people prefer to hand write on paper, dry erase boards, or onto a wall with dry erase paint, while others want to type them and store them either digitally or physically. Others trust their memory, which can be risky if something slips your mind. The nature of the idea changes with the medium used to store it. Personal creative things, like novel ideas, tend to be stored in the mind or on a digital file only to be read by its creator, because a novel is a fragile thing at is early stage. The idea needs to be nourished and grown and the scoffing criticisms of others can destroy it. Every type of project or idea needs to be recorded; trusting one’s memory has probably cost humanity more good ideas than we’re prepared to admit. Our memories are weak malleable things, and good ideas can often be lost or corrupted. Different types of ideas suit better to different mediums. Process ideas like outlines or organizational structures are best on dry erase paint. Being able to write big and visually connect things then step away and see the construction helps us diagnose the strengths and weaknesses. They benefit from outsiders seeing them and being able to provide fresh eyes and ideas. As a general rule: the more personal an idea is the more hidden the means of recording it, and the more professional the more public the means to record it. Something...