#278 How I Organise my Ideas and Downloads

For years, I’ve been keeping an electronic journal where I jot down thoughts, realisations, ideas, anecdotes, questions and topics. It lives in the form of a Word Doc. consisting of hundreds of thousands of words; around the equivalent of three or four 250-300 page books. Over the years I’ve learned that thinking happens despite me and while a lot of it is complete shit, some of it is worth paying attention to and more importantly, taking action on. Ergo, the journal. Sometimes it’s the beginning of something that I intend to expand on later, sometimes it’s a complete idea and/or message in and of itself and sometimes, it’s a piece of a cognitive puzzle that I’m yet to figure out. Often it’s a paragraph or two, occasionally a single sentence, sometimes a dot-point list and with increasing regularity, it’s a page of rambling ideas that seem to come through me, not from me. Sometimes it’s a very intentional, logical, conscious download and sometimes, it’s more of an overwhelm of creativity, inspiration and insight coming from somewhere beyond my acquired knowledge, experience and/or education. I try not to over-think it or ‘get in the way’ but rather, just type.