We writers deal with thousands of seeds. Those seeds are ideas. They are scraps of stories, articles, books, speeches, or workshops. Ideas come and go by the dozens every day. It’s hard to tell in the moment which ones are worth keeping, and which we should discard.

That’s why we need to make a habit of planting those seeds—in other words, keeping track of them. Much has been written about different systems to organize your ideas. You can use printed journals, computer apps, a notecard system, or any of a dozen other ways to store and organize ideas.

The system doesn’t matter as much as your consistency in recording those ideas and keeping them somewhere you can retrieve them. A good option is to use a combination of tools—perhaps a small notebook you carry with you, plus apps where you transfer ideas and then search for them later.

If you want a harvest of good writing, you have to plant your ideas in some kind of system where they can take shape. Don’t trust your memory. Many great ideas have been lost because people forgot to write them down.

If you don’t have a good system, ask three writer friends what they use and start implementing a system within the next day.

Question: Do you have a system in place to record and retrieve your ideas?

The post Planting: Keep Track of Your Ideas appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

As a writer, you probably spend lots of time, like I do, taking notes from conversations, books, meetings, and brainstorming sessions. But what do you do with all those notes, and how do you ensure you have a system for accessing that information later on?

My guest today has thought a lot about this problem, and he’s here to offer some brilliant solutions!

His name is Jeff Brown, and he is an award-winning radio producer and a former nationally syndicated morning show host. After more than 25 years in the radio and music industries, Jeff went boss-free in 2013 and launched the Read to Lead podcast, which has millions of downloads.

Jeff is also the co-author of the fantastic book Read to Lead: The Simple Habit That Expands Your Influence and Boosts Your Career.

In this conversation, Jeff helps us understand how to take better notes and get organized by understanding different note-taking archetypes and which tools are the best fit for each type. We also dive into the story of writing the Read to Lead book, how he found a publisher, and how he worked with his co-writer Jesse Wisnewski.

We also talk about Jeff’s course, Note-Making Mastery, of which I’m a student. Jeff is graciously offering Daily Writer listeners $100 off the self-paced edition of the course, which includes access to recorded training sessions, Q&A recordings, a proven process for collecting and organizing your daily notes, and much more. To take advantage of this special offer, visit https://dailywriterlife.com/notemakingmastery.

The post Jeff Brown on the Art of Taking Notes and Writing “Read to Lead” appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.