Our minds create a continuous stream of ideas. They come and go occasionally and they slip away through our minds if you didn't capture them.
Technology have made this capturing process much easier with an abundance of capturing apps.
To the point where we almost can be reassured that no idea is left behind.
It is an enjoyable process to capture your ideas any time, anywhere knowing that you can get back to them when you have more free time.
Most of people don't have a problem in capturing their fleeting ideas. But many get stuck in this phase and never move beyond it, where they obsess about loosing their thoughts and over capture every single one of them, but almost never re-visit them. Creating a digital dump yard, where everything is cluttered and finding anything becomes unpleasant, clunky and almost impossible.
The process of revisiting your ideas is a whole new beast to tackle, maybe in a different post. But for now I'll just share few of my favorite capturing tools. This is not an extensive list as I usually go with my flow and change my capturing tool every once in awhile.
In the GTD system, there is a set of clear rules and structured algorithm to keep in mind during the capturing process. Which arguably can be slightly cumbersome and .. takes the fun out if it.
Making a loose, friction free structure in your mind on how to approach your captured ideas is the key. There is no right or wrong here, it is your personal ideas after all, and you get to save them and explore them how ever you feel like. Its also important that you enjoy it and not feel burdened by this structure, so you can adhere with it. think of it as habit.
There are two key points I feel are critical where most people miss:
Is it truly something you want to to get back to?
How can your future self find it easily and quickly when needed?
Okay I need to add one more critical point for this to work:
Have an inbox where you put all ideas in it. Have a regular maximum time limit where you must review and clear your inbox. you can make that weekly for example. No slacking here. Or else this will not work and soon you'll be drowning back in your own inbox.
Keep the process simple and straightforward. Don't make decisions on where it belongs or where to add it. Everything just goes to the inbox.
This fraction of second decision making process, when taken out will make it much easier and enjoyable where you truly capture inspirations on the go.
I just find this fun to use, easy to capture, elegant looking. It is meant to be an extension to your brain.
It kind of put the capturing ideas in a state of flow. it feels natural to use.
There is no timeline, no folders, no hierarchical system. nothing of that.
Just an easy and natural way to search, find and connect your saved fleet of ideas.
This is a beautiful and minimal note taking app. What makes it more intuitive to use than apple notes for example, is how you can connect your thoughts using bidirectional kind of linking. Just connect your ideas together and less worry about folders and categories.
Once you get used to this way of note taking, your ideas will align easily and leave you to connect the dots back and forth.
I had a slight bumpy journey with notion to be honest.
It was a slate white page that I had no idea what to do with.
There were so many features and I had no idea where to start.
There is a minimal learning curve but once you find your flow with notion along your personal knowledge system, It could potentially take over.
As for myself, It became a cornerstone of my saved ideas and inventory of inspiration. A more loose personal don't forget list and a commonplace for personal related readings, articles that I like all goes to notion.
I just like the organized chaos and the visual feel to it.
If you didn't feel like building your own pages. Using the abundant notion templates available online is a huge advantage.
You know how your books are full of highlights that you probably never go back to .. ever?
I finally got over this stage of my life. Because of notion and readwise, I actively read and re-read my summaries. I make much purposeful highlights. I take better notes. I progressively summarise. I truly became a better reader.
Another must read book that can complement this strategy if you are interested is How to take smart notes by Sönke Ahrens.
In my opinion, this old beast is unshakable, you absolutely can use it solely to capture, save, organize and retrieve all your data.
I've been using this as my reliable personal knowledge management system since 2012.
I have a crazy load of notes that I collected during my residency training preparing for the final boards. for my professional work/study I even have a wider collection of flashcards that I make as I go. as everything else in life, in medicine, you never really stop learning.
And Evernote have been my reliable pocket extension of my brain since then.
The recent trend away from Evernote thinks of it as a too rigid of a system where it is too structured from some. Obviously it depends on hierarchies.
It really depends on you how to use it.
This is an example where I heavily depend on Evernote's structure to quickly fetch a flashcard kind of note.
This obviously took me years to develop my own personal knowledge database.
I quickly jot a note to the inbox. Usually it can be either a question I need to look for its answer, or an answer I was looking for to a certain question.
I frequently review the inbox to assign each note to where it belongs. ( I use the PARA method by Tiago Forte for categorization)
Add a title that quickly gives a clue about what the note contains. In a way where my future self can easily find it when in need.
I usually keep them short and focused. I could have hundreds of notes on steroids. But each note addresses a different question.
I tag away like crazy. It just works for me. I anticipate what my future self will be looking for, and tag accordingly.
If you work Emergency Medicine, or any critical care speciality, It's a ton of critical decisions within very short time span. You try your best to prevent the cognitive decision fatigue. Fetching your memory under stress is not a good idea.
Like I mentioned earlier this is not an extensive list and there is way more you can try out and maybe prefer, but the key is you gotta build your own system, give each one a fair trial before deciding on it. Just don't go crazy moving from one to another. The key is you need some consistency.
Create your habit.
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