About remembering those amazing ideas

It’s 2:16 am. You’re sound asleep … or more accurately were sound asleep. A brilliant business idea just flashes through your mind (or perhaps a solution to that complex problem from work or school), and you’re giddy with excitement.

You tell yourself that you’ll remember this jewel in the morning…. except that by 8am, its long forgotten, and now you’re just annoyed with yourself.

Has this happened to you? I’ve certainly experienced more than a few times – so much so that I went in search of a solution, and found a rather simple (and low-tech) remedy that works reliably.

And the solution is to keep a pen and notebook (a journal or diary – not a Thinkpad) next to my bed. When an important idea or thought arrives in the wee hours of the night, I immediately write it down, preferably without switching on a light so that I don’t wake up entirely.

This tricks my mind to ‘let it go’. It’s job is done because I’ve written down want it wanted to remind me, and it inevitably quietens down quite quickly.

Side note: if you struggle to sleep due to too many thoughts rattling in your head, experiment with jotting them down, and see if this doesn’t ease the busy-ness.

You might ask why not just use a mobile phone? Basically, it’s too tempting for my FOMO to open up something else (e.g. mail, Instagram, etc, etc).

The next challenge, unfortunately, is to decipher what i scrawled at 2:16 am. Mercifully, there’s normally enough legible text to remind me of the main idea.

I then transfer that to my to-do system for actioning, and I clear the page of my notebook – it’s now ready for the next night’s musings.

Let me know if this helps you keep your great ideas!