We have been talking about the importance of a growth mindset. If we look at growth as a natural byproduct of good habits we practice on a regular basis, the first habit is preparing the soil of your mind. The second one is planting.

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.

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

Have you ever had the unfortunate luck of losing a great idea because you failed to write it down?

This is one of the most vexing problems we writers deal with. We have great ideas all of the time, but we neglect to write them down. Once they are out of our brains, it’s almost impossible to retrieve them.

So what’s the solution? The English author Will Self gives us a great tip: “Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea forever.”

He’s talking about a paper notebook, but a digital equivalent will do just fine. You can easily capture ideas with your phone. I do this all the time on my iPhone by asking Siri to create a note.

That being said, there is immense creative power in a paper notebook or journal. There is an intimate connection between your brain and your hand that cannot be duplicated on a phone or computer. When you write something down on paper, you will remember it better.

Whether you use paper or go digital, make a notebook your new sidekick. Take it everywhere you go. It’s the Robin to your Batman, the Abbot to your Costello, the Samwise to your Frodo. And just like a pretend sidekick, it will come to your rescue time after time and you’ll never lose a great idea again.

The post Meet Your New Sidekick, the Notebook appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.