LifeDev

By Chuck Frey

Photo by quartermane.

Want to become a better creative problem solver? One of the most productive tools you can use to solve problems and generate great ideas is mind mapping software. Simply put, this type of software enables you to capture your ideas in a unique, highly visual way: Your current project or challenge is located at the center of your map. Attached to it are primary topics that radiate out in all directions. These main branches can have sub-branches, each containing a key word, phase or concept.

Tony Buzan, the renowned developer of the concept of mind mapping, calls it “a Swiss Army Knife for the brain.” That’s because it works the way your brain does – by association – and it can help you to leverage more of your latent creativity. Here’s how:

Whole brain creativity

The practice of mind mapping makes excellent use of both the left (logical, orderly) and right (creative, visual, random) sides of your brain, enabling you to access more of your brain’s creative capabilities. It’s a powerful form of whole brain thinking.

Refactoring creates new insights

Topics can be moved from one place to another within your map with complete freedom, which helps you to make creative connections between them. This process of moving a topic to a new location and then rethinking its meaning in the context of its new parent topic is called “refactoring,” and it can be a powerful creative catalyst. No other type of software allows you to move ideas around and play “what if” with your thoughts the way that mind mapping software does.

Improved problem definition

Sometimes when we’re faced with a complex problem in business, we have a tendency to grab at the most apparent problem and solve that – only to discover that it was only a peripheral issue. We solved the wrong problem. Mind mapping software is a great tool for achieving more accurate problem definition, because you can use it to “deconstruct” a problem or challenge and see relationships between its elements that weren’t visible before. And it increases the odds that you will correctly identify the underlying problem, rather than picking away unproductively at peripheral symptoms.

Creativity in the white space

Mind mapping software enables you to imagine “white space” opportunities and ideas that may exist between the branches of your map. How does this work? Your subconscious mind doesn’t like to view incomplete concepts or images. When it sees them, it tries to “fill in the blanks” – the information or ideas that appear to be missing. When I’m using mind mapping software to capture my thoughts, I find that my thoughts just “flow” naturally from my brain, through my fingertips and onto the screen. When I create a new topic, my brain immediately starts thinking about concepts and ideas that are related to that. Some mind mapping software programs enable you to capture them quickly in a “brainstorming mode,” using only the keyboard, helping you to keep the flow of ideas coming.

Organizing and prioritizing your ideas

Mind mapping software isn’t just for generating ideas. It’s also a powerful tool for organizing and prioritizing them, especially in a group brainstorming session. For example, you can group promising ideas on one branch, and those for future consideration on another branch of your map. You can also assign numerical or A/B/C values to each idea or use icons or symbols to prioritize them. In addition, some programs even enable you to filter the contents of your maps based on those symbols – hiding everything else and showing only those topics that have a certain symbol attached to them. This is an easy way to reduce the amount of information in a large map down to a manageable level, so you can quickly focus upon your best ideas.

Chuck Frey is author of The Mind Mapping Software Blog and has written extensively about this type of productivity software. He is also the founder of InnovationTools, the leading innovation site on the web.

If you’ve been to the site recently, you’ll notice that there’s a lot less posting activity with the site. This is partially because I’ve accepted the position as FreelanceSwitch’s editor, and also because I’ve been writing for Smashing Magazine. As I’ve been getting the hang of all the new responsibilities, posting frequency has taken a nosedive. (Not that posting frequency is the most important aspect of a blog.)

I’ve also been developing my usual steady stream of projects, and I’m really excited about the stuff that’s going to be coming down the pipe in the next couple of months. It’s going to be an exciting time!

That said, posting at LifeDev has taken a dip as a result of all the goings on. I’d love to have some guest writing on the site while I adjust to the new workload. I’ll have some new material up in a very short time.

So, if there are any guest writers who have an interest in all things creative and want to get their name and content out to a large creative creative community, feel free to send article pitches to me at blogfuse at gmail.com. I’d love to have some fresh perspectives from the readers.

Thanks everyone!

Glen

Photo by dhammza.

Sites like Digg, Reddit and Delicious are great for generating ideas. There is no shortage of creative ideas and ways to frame information than what makes to the front page of these sites.

Most people think that social media sites are only useful for finding what the latest news is. While that is one of the main functions of these sites, many times a pretty creative thought or article lands on the homepage.

What’s Popular

People don’t want to talk, argue, or debate about a boring topic. They won’t vote for something that’s uninteresting or dumb. A community doesn’t exist around content that isn’t inspiring.

What’s popular isn’t necessarily news. Sometimes what’s on these social media sites is excellent content. Content that has been carefully crafted, with a unique angle or creative slant. Social media communities are built around information that inspires.

So how do we find the inspiration?

View it as a filter

The key difference between social media sites and search engines is that humans are making the recommendations. Some of them may even be your friends. This is why using social media as a “filter” for news and inspiration is a fantastic idea.

Instead of letting a piece of software or an algorithm decide what I’m looking for, I can use a friend (or group of friends) to filter the information for me. There are certain people on Twitter who post relevant links and information that I almost always find useful.

You can even customize your filter at many social sites like Friendfeed to ensure that you’re only seeing the information that’s relevant to you. For example, I love the Code Junkies room at Friendfeed.

Frequently popular sites are usually places of inspiration

If a site is continuously on the front page of social media sites, you can bet that your bottom dollar that the writer is doing one of two things:

1. an awesome writer
2. using creative, interesting titles

Great writers ooze creativity

Photo by bensonkua

If a writer consistently lands on the home pages of social news sites, the smart money says he or she is an excellent writer. It’s not an easy task to make it to the homepage with boring content. Successful social writers know how to use creative concepts and ideas to write. If you’re needing inspiration, look no further than a great writer.

Inspiring titles

Let’s say that a massively-crappy article manages to make it to the homepage of one of the social media websites. The article must have had a killer title. Even if nothing can be gleaned from the body of the article, the fact that the writer could craft a title that good and entice enough people to vote for it is a lot of inspiration in itself.

Sometimes the creativity isn’t found in the article, but rather in the title.

Searching for Creativity

Sometimes Google isn’t the best place to find creative solutions or ideas. Sometimes the best place to search is through the archives of sites like Delicious or Reddit or Friendfeed. These sites have information that has been thoughtfully submitted (not scraped from the web) on interesting web sites or topics. The difference between a search engine and social news or bookmarking site is that people filter the results.

For example, Delicious is oftentimes my first choice for search engine when I’m looking for a tutorial or an explanation on how to do something in web development. If I’m looking for something very specific, Delicious is a great place to start. Why? Because there are usually less irrelevant results. Real people took the time to bookmark these sites, and if they’re bookmarked multiple times, you know the resource is valid.

You can save a lot of wasted clicks by searching through social sites.

Conclusions

There’s no shortage of creativity to be found at social news and bookmarking sites. While they’re usually seen as time sinks, often they’ll give great results for finding something very specific. A general rule of thumb is this: If people take the time to bookmark, submit or vote on a story, it’s more than likely to be a better resource.

Photo by macropolos

Creativity is something that’s not easily contained. In fact, it’s contagious. When creative people start putting their heads together, some amazing things happen. It’s a rare occasion when an incredible idea is solely created by one person.

Yet, it can be hard to let go of our ideas. Just as parents with children going away to college in the next few weeks, giving our ideas away is much like the same thing. There’s that little creativity myth that says that keeping our ideas to ourself is much better than sharing them. After all, what if someone steals them?!

Big idea man Seth Godin opened my eyes as to why “giving away” ideas is a great thing.

Padmanabhan wrote me a nice note today, asking why I so freely give away ideas. (It was nice because he thought some of the ideas were actually good ones).

I responded that ideas are easy, doing stuff is hard.

My feeling is that the more often you create and share ideas, the better you get at it. The process of manipulating and ultimately spreading ideas improves both the quality and the quantity of what you create, at least it does for me.

Seth made a beautiful point. 99% of the time the problem isn’t someone stealing your idea, it’s you not actually doing it. So what better way to put an idea into motion than having more people help?

There are many ideas that I’ve had that never would have come close to completing without the help of others. Sharing ideas is critical.

But you don’t have to take our word for it.

Real-world examples

Photo by DavidBole

There are plenty of real-world examples of projects who have embraced the open source approach and are, ahem, kicking the tail of other closed projects.

Firefox - Firefox is an open source browser that is creeping up on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Right now Firefox owns 42% of the browser market share, and looks to keep gaining on Redmond’s browser. Why? Because Firefox has opened up its code base. IE is limited to only what Microsoft’s programmers add to it. Firefox is improving rapidly, thanks to a giant base of programmers who develop things like themes and extensions. For free.

Wikipedia - Dictionary salesmen have long been eating the lunch of Wikipedia. Instead of relying on print reference books, people can “wikipedia” (yes, used as a verb) just about anything and have instant access to knowledge. No paper cuts, no books.

Wikipedia depends on contributors who create pages for topics. To ensure that someone isn’t putting false entries on the site, the massive number of people reading the pages act as a checks and balances. If something looks fishy, it’s flagged by other readers or users. Ultimately, the site depends on open source to power the site.

Linux - Linux is an open source operating system. Because Linux is under an open source license, anyone can download the software for free and modify it to suit their needs. Consequently, there a lot of custom “distributions” of Linux that have been tailored for specific needs.

The community keeps growing at a rapid pace, and some computers are being sold with Linux as the operating system, instead of Windows.

Projects like these have seen a lot of growth because there were multiple people involved in the idea. More involvement means better community, better community means better results, better results = Better Products.

How to Open Source Your Ideas

Photo by CapraRoyale

Now that we’ve covered why it’s a good idea to release your ideas, here are a few ways to do it.

Other people have different strengths and smarts than you

Creating Web Warrior Tools went really well for one main reason: I found a partner that had the strengths and smarts that I didn’t. Leo had many skills that I didn’t (and desperately needed). He kept me grounded, not wanting to accomplish too many things at one time, which is my biggest weaknes. He’s a much better marketer than I could ever hope to be. Leo and I had abilities that perfectly complemented each other.

I could have tried to put together WWT by myself, but it wouldn’t have been a fraction as cool as it is now, and might not have even left the ground. (The fact that it I think it’s cool is totally subjective, by the way.)

It makes sense to only share some ideas with a few trusted friends. The benefit of actually sharing ideas isn’t to get as many people to hear them. The benefit is that you’re actually sharing them with other people.

Many hands make light work

If you need something done, open sourcing an idea is possibly the quickest way. Because of the free-sharing spirit of open source, people give freely to an idea. Sharing ideas with people and allowing them to work on it gets them excited too. Now you’ve got an army of people (with different strengths and skills as you) working on your idea, giving it a life of its own. The idea is now something bigger than you.

How to Open Source your ideas

If you’re still wanting to share your ideas, it’s not always as easy as giving them away. There’s almost an art to effectively giving away ideas. It’s a mix of using the right tools and getting into the proper state of mind.

Online tools

The Internet is a great way to share information, and it’s becoming easier and easier. Instead of using traditional methods like emailing ideas back and forth, try using one of the many online collaboration apps that have sprung up over the years.

• Google Docs - If you like writing word docs but wish you had a little more capability in terms of sharing, try Google Docs. Now you can edit in real-time, see changes by other collaborators, and even publish to the web.
• Docstoc - If you’ve got your idea in pdf or .doc form, you can upload it to Docstoc and share it with the masses. You can then embed the pdf on a website or blog post, among many other things. Viral pdf viewers like Docstoc are perfect for spreading ideas.
• Twitter - Twitter can be a great way to exchange ideas with many different groups of people at one time.
• Blog post - If you’ve got a blog that you post in regularly, release the idea to the masses via a blog post.
• Wikis - Wikis are another smart way to share information in a collaborative environment. You can use online wiki services like pbwiki to create a wiki that you can share and have other people edit.

There are many other methods for sharing ideas that we didn’t touch on. Instant messaging, Skype, and IRC to name a few. The important thing to remember is that the sharing of ideas is quick, is a low-barrier of entry for other collaborators, and is easy to share. Just stop emailing documents, for crying out loud!

Embrace collaboration

It’s important to start changing the way you think about your ideas if you’re going to start letting other people work on them. Pretty soon you’ll have people questioning every aspect of your idea. This is a necessary and healthy aspect of collaboration. If you’re really wanting to let other people (more than one, at least) start working on your ideas, you’ll have to be able to do three things.

1. Realize you can’t do everything on your own - There’s a tendency as idea owners to want to control and do everything. People don’t want to just add input, they want to work on the idea too! Remember, these people have the same goal as you: they want the idea to get better and better. Give up some responsibility. You’ll find happier collaborators and more time for yourself to work on other ideas.
2. Allow for the free exchange of ideas - Now that the idea is open to other people’s interpretation, there are obviously going to be new and different ideas spinning off of it. Some ideas may be so revolutionary and different that they completely change the scope of the original project. That’s totally normal. Remember: The idea is now bigger than just you. You have to be willing to be accept that someone else may have an even better idea than yours.
3. Trust other people - Allowing other people to work on your idea ultimately requires more trust. By letting other people work on the idea, improve the idea and even rip the idea to shreds takes trust. Lots of it. You’ll have to accept that these people working on your idea want the idea to succeed too.

Everybody wins

If you’re able to successfully open source your ideas and watch them grow under the care of one or two other people, or even a large community, you’ll find that everybody involved wins. The community has something to work on, a project to finish. People need goals and a sense of belonging to a cause or project. A community working on an idea is a great way to achieve that.

The money still follows

If you’re looking to make money, you can do that as well under a myriad of other ways. You could publish a book about the project, sell ads on the website, create a “freemium” model plan where people can pay for specific services, and many other ways. You’re creative right? If you’ve got a great idea, odds are you’ll be able to think of a creative way to make money too.

I should note that not every great idea will make money at first, or maybe even ever. But there is a great chance you will. If the idea is solid, making money shouldn’t be that hard.

Something bigger than you

The best part about unleashing your idea and letting a community take hold of it is the fact that now the idea is bigger than you. You’ve created something that other people have worked on, talked about and added value to. That’s something special by itself.

It takes a smart person to come up with a great idea. It takes an even smarter person to develop that idea by sharing it with others.

This post was helped along by Leo of Zen Habits. In fact, Leo and I helped each other write our posts. We collaborated over IM and helped outline ideas for each other’s post. The result: Leo’s awesome post about rules for work and this post on open sourcing ideas.

Good friend Jonathan Fields has posted an excellent review on my latest ebook Jump-Start Your Workspace. In fact, Jonathan provides such a great description that I wonder if I could match it.

It speaks to not only your physical workspace, but your “psychic” workspace. So, when Stansberry talks about clutter, he starts with your desk, but then moves to your brain. When he talks about your personal environment, he addresses things as simple as hygiene and exercise, both of which can have real impacts on your ability to get things done. As someone who is a big believer in the cross-impact of lifestyle on work, this approach resonated with me.

Check out the rest of Jonathan’s review to read a real-world review (without my personal biases of the ebook. (Because I’ll just tell you it’s awesome and you should buy it).

:)

So how do I use the Digg This button for Podcasts? Use the exact same strategy as the previous example; just use the podcast Permalink URL instead. As a serial entrepreneur, I’m addicted to ideas. I feed off of ‘em. And nothing makes me more upset than having a great idea… and losing it. Ideas never happen at opportune times, and having the proper idea capture tools can make sure that you’ll capture all your ideas for later processing.

The problem with ideas is that they’re situational. You don’t only have ideas while you’re in front of the computer, or walking your dog. Ideas happen all the time. This poses an interesting problem when you’re trying to capture all your ideas.

In order to capture every single little idea that we have, we’ll need to take a multi-pronged approach to capturing the little bits of genius that we have throughout our day. Here’s a list of tools that can help you capture your ideas no matter what the activity.

I should note that we’re not talking about complex systems like mind mapping and other GTD systems. While they’re awesome tools, we’re only interested in the ones that allow us to quickly capture what’s tickling our brain. Tools for organizing ideas is a completely different topic.

Analog Idea Capture

Analog idea capturing is the oldest and one of the most useful forms of idea capture. Often technology can get in the way of simply storing our ideas. Analog idea capture is great for those times when you’re unplugged from the world or don’t have access to a computer. Some people (like myself) prefer analog idea capture over any other method because it’s the simplest. Here are some analog idea capture tools:

Photo by teo

Hipster PDA. Merlin Mann’s infamous creation is a staple to anyone who wants to jot ideas on the cheap. The Hipster PDA consists of 2 things: 3×5 notecards and a binder clip. It’s a simple lo-fi solution for creative people on the go.

Pocket Briefcase. The pocket briefcase expands upon the hipster PDA idea with a bit of a formal twist. For uptight types who don’t want anything other than leather touching their clothes, the pocket briefcase holsters 3×5 cards and has compartments for other scraps of paper.

Moleskine. The moleskine is nothing more than a notebook with excellent grade of paper and leather binding. While it sounds a bit excessive, anyone who’s ever used one will agree when I say that you won’t go back to the hipster PDA. There’s a certain amount of satisfaction that comes to writing ideas in one of these puppies.

Rite in the Rain notepad

Rite in the Rain. Possibly one of the more eccentric capture tools, rite in the rain is all weather notebook that was made to “specifically shed water in any weather condition”. If you’re finding yourself in adverse conditions constantly, this might be a smart tool to snag.

Write boards. Writeboards allow you to quickly add ideas, but they really shine in the fact that the ideas stay visible. It’s hard to miss a writeboard on the wall. The fact that you can quickly erase and add to an idea is another bonus.

Sticky notes. We all know what sticky notes do. They’re the essential office product that allow you to scrawl notes quickly, and stick them somewhere prominent so you won’t miss them. While sticky notes don’t necessarily save well over a long period of time, they’re awesome for on-the-run idea capture.

Mac Software

Mac users pride themselves on the amount and quality of organization and productivity apps. As a general rule, there are a lot more applications like this written for the Mac. However, not all of them specialize in idea capture. Here are a few that do.

Quicksilver appending to text file.
Photo from 43Folders.

Quicksilver. Quicksilver is the quintessential application for doing just about everything better and faster on a mac. So naturally, it’s no surprise that you can quickly capture ideas with the little program.

Probably the easiest way to capture ideas is to append text to an existing document. Merlin at 43Folders covers this extensively, and shows the benefits of using the method for quickly scribbling notes into a text file.

You can also use Quicksilver with other todo list applications like iGTD, Backpack and Remember the Milk. Very nifty.

iGTD. iGTD is an excellent piece of free GTD software. However, the strength of the application is how easy it is to capture tasks and ideas quickly. You can use a keyboard command to quickly add items or tasks, and it also integrates into Quicksilver.

Photo by reinoutvanrees

OmniFocus. OmniFocus is a great piece of task management software. OmniFocus claims to allow you to quickly capture tasks from anywhere, without switching applications. You can email yourself tasks or capture them via a dashboard widget. The other handy feature about OmniFocus is that it integrates with the iPhone, so anything you capture there will sync with your Mac.

Screenshot. There’s nothing like a good ‘ol fashioned screenshot when it comes to capturing ideas. Apple computers allow you to resize the screenshot before you take it, and they allow you to quickly take it via a keyboard command of Cmd + Shift + 4.

There are plenty of applications that can help you capture screenshots, but since it’s built in to mac functionality, why download another program?

Windows Software

While Mac users traditionally tend to have lots more productivity applications to choose from, the Windows community appears to be catching up.

FlyWorld Flyworld is an interesting (and expensive) solution to quick idea capture. FlyWorld is a piece of software that allows you to quickly convert handwritten text to digital text with pen and paper, using a special pen and notepad. Essentially, the application syncs your written text to digital text on your PC. If you love using paper tools to capture ideas but want to ensure that they’re saved digitally, FlyPaper might be a great solution.

Appending text with launchy. From Lifehacker.

Launchy. Launchy is an open-sourced equivalent of Quicksilver for Windows. It has nearly all the functionality that Quicksilver has, and can also append text to files as well as integrate with other GTD and task management software through the use of plugins.

Screenshot. Like the mac, Windows computers come with a built in screen capture function. Just tap the little Print Screen key in the upper right part of your keyboard, and Windows will capture a shot of what’s going on your desktop.

Screenshots are a really helpful way to visually capture what your looking at. Much like the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”, a screen-grab can quickly show you what’s going on, without having to take the time to write it down. The only downside is that screenshots don’t allow you to search text found in screenshots, unless you’re using Evernote (more below).

Universal idea capture software

Evernote

Evernote. Evernote is a new capturing software that’s available on iPhone, Mac, PC, mobile phones and Firefox. Essentially, you can capture ideas anywhere, while it syncs everywhere. Make a note on your iPhone, and it syncs online and on your computer desktop. However, the real benefit of Evernote is the ability to read text inside of images. If you took a screenshot of your desktop, Evernote would go through and scan the screenshot and extract any text it found with it, allowing you to search for it later. A very quick and handy way to capture everything and index it into a searchable database.

Evernote offers a tiered pricing scale, but you can store up to 40 MB of information for free.

Simple text files. Text files are one of the oldest and simplest forms of saving ideas on a computer. No matter what the platform, you can create and save text files to your hard drive. Some might scoff at the simple nature of the text editor, but it’s easily one of my favorite platforms for capturing ideas. While it doesn’t come with the bells and whistles of software like Word, it’s quick and easy. With text files, the software doesn’t get in the way of the idea like more complicated software.

Web Apps for Idea Capture

While there are many web applications for todo lists, project management and the like, I only featured the best at idea capture. Many boast at their usefulness, but only a few really capitalize on quickly capturing thoughts and ideas. These are the creme de la creme of idea-capturing web apps.

Photo by tupton

Backpack. Backpack is one of the pioneers of todo list applications. It has consistently been one of the best and most widely used applications, mainly because there are many ways to use the application. Thanks to an API, there are lots of applications that allow you to use Backpack in a number of different ways. This makes capturing data and thoughts easily. For example, there’s a dashboard widget that allows you to view your Backpack items on your desktop.

Google Docs. Google Docs is an online version of a word processor, like Microsoft Word. Google docs are excellent for writing ideas that might come up during the day. For example, I create a fresh document with every post idea I have for LifeDev or Web Jackalope. It’s like saving ideas to text files, except they’re saved on the Internet. Google Docs also allows you to sync the documents for offline use, if you use Google Gears.

Another great feature of Google Docs is that you can create unlimited documents that can be organized by folder. It’s important to be able to organize your thoughts and ideas so they’re not misplaced in the future.

Remember the Milk. Remember the Milk (RTM) is in a whole different league when it comes to portability and the number of options for capturing ideas. Not only do they have great task management software, they also integrate with a slew of services that help you capture ideas. That’s right, idea capture at it’s finest.

RTM integrates with: Gmail, Blackberry, iPhone/iPod touch, Twitter and Google Calendar.

Now Do This

Now do this. Now Do This is so simple it’s almost a parody on other productivity apps. You simply type in a list (separated by line breaks) of your todo items. While it’s made to be a todo tool, it can be used to quickly keep ideas on the forefront on your mind and it allows a dead-simple way to store ideas. Just click “edit list” and add your idea, thought, or simple whatever. No registration needed.

Twitter. Believe it or not, you can use the handy messaging tool on Twitter to quickly dump ideas into your account. Twitter integrates with Remember the Milk, and Brett Kelly has a great method for sending messages to yourself from Twitter. Twitter can be a very powerful tool because of the wide user base and all the applications that have been created for Twitter. You can literally access Twitter from almost any device or platform, so Twitter seems like a great candidate for ubiquitous capture.

(Oh, and you can follow me on Twitter if you’re so inclined.)

Capture applications for the Phone

As the cell phone market continues to grow and more smart phones are entering the market, it only makes sense that more people will be using their cell phones for more and more things. Now that services are developing mobile-friendly applications, it’s becoming much easier to capture information without needing a computer or a notebook.

iPhone/BlackBerry. Smartphones like the iPhone or the Blackberry have changed the way that people use cell phones. With the ability to take pictures, access the web, email and text messaging, sending and receiving different forms of communication and media is now much easier. There are a myriad of productivity and capturing applications at the iPhone app store, Both iPhone and Blackberry users can take notes with default applications. While I’m not an expert on smartphones, it would appear that the iPhone’s app store has more specific applications for idea capture, like OmniFocus for the iPhone. There is an application that works for both Blackberry and iPhones called Note2Self that allows you to record voice messages to yourself that looks very promising.

Jott. Jott is an incredible and simple way to store random thoughts that happen when you don’t have a computer or some paper handy. Just call Jott’s number, and say your idea. Jott converts your speech to text and can email it to you. Very simple and very powerful.

Send yourself a text message. People have been using this trick since texting was introduced to the cell phone. Just simply type your text message and send it to your phone number. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it works in a pinch.

Miscellaneous Idea Capture Tools

Spy watch that captures audio.

Recording MP3 watch. This nifty little watch allows you to record and play audio straight into the watch. You can plug earphones into the watch and listen to your playback. Not only is it incredibly useful, you’ll also feel like a spy when wearing it. Seriously.

Remembering the idea until morning. I think nearly everyone has ideas right before go to sleep, while your mind is winding down. Bert Webb has an interesting method for remembering the idea until the next morning, if you’re too tired or lazy to write the idea down.

Reach over and turn your alarm clock upside down, lay the night stand lamp on its side, place a shoe in a drawer, or drape your house coat over the lamp. In the morning, when you rise, the first thought you will have after rising will be, “Why the hell did I do that??” At that time, natural memory will take over and remind you.

Sounds like a good idea to me. I personally just prefer keeping a notepad and pen near the bed, but to each his own.

There are more tools…

This is by no means a comprehensive list of applications that help with idea capture. If you can think of any others (or more that you’d like to see), feel free to leave them in the comments below!

If you enjoyed the post, help support it by saving it to Del.icio.us!