Have you ever experienced those rare moments where you think of a brilliant idea? You're in the shower or driving home from work and something just clicks. It feels good, right? Everything you were previously thinking about makes sense, you made a connection that you hadn't seen before, and you somewhat understand what people mean when they say "the stars have aligned." And then just as miraculously as it arrived, a good idea can be gone in an instant. Eureka moments can happen anywhere. Whether you're in the midst of problem-solving or taking a long nature walk for a break, inspiration often surprises us with its brilliance and then curses us with stupidity when we forget it.
I used to let these moments pass me by, merely dismissing the thought and then later randomly wonder if anything could have ever come of it. Now, I have made a habit of writing down my ideas. An interesting recipe that I want to try, a natural phenomenon that I want to learn more about, a scientific experiment that would be interesting to perform. Write it down. For me, it often leads to other thoughts that may or may not be tangentially related to my original idea. But that's okay. I can allow myself to be sidetracked and explore other ideas at the same time, while still saving my initial thought.
It doesn't matter if it's silly, random, or downright weird. Write it down.
When I started this practice of writing down my ideas, I fell into a common thought trap of trying to fit ideas together in a certain way or using up all related ideas in one project. Don't be too attached to your ideas either. Be flexible. Instead of trying to fit a bunch of ideas into one project, be comfortable with saving ideas for later. Sometimes the scope of a project does not allow you to explore everything at once, and your thought process actually benefits from putting some ideas on the back burner.
in order to practice this habit, I created a running word document where I can write down ideas. This file acts as a "living document" where I can add spur-of-the-moment ideas, type random half-full sentences, and provides a space to have free-flowing thoughts. Here, I'm not impeded by the need to craft perfect eloquent sentences and paragraphs. There's a light organization of my document into general topics, and sparse green highlighting on ideas that I have not used yet. I've used ideas from this page in my blog, Odyssey articles, research experiments, and event planning.
For moments of inspiration that happen on-the-go, I use a designated page in my Notes app for jotting down random ideas or phrases. These can then be added to my "living document" at a later time. For instance, last month I was at the hair salon getting my hair cut and dyed. I already had the idea to write a story about my drastic hairstyle change beforehand, but I wasn't sure how I was going to begin the piece or the final direction it was going to take me.
I started talking to my hairdresser about the idea of a haircut being symbolic of a life change, and she remembered a quote that I ended up using as my opener. At that moment, I whipped out my phone, jotted it down, tried to find the source of the quote, and wrote it down for later. Then when I eventually sat down to write the piece, I had an immediate jumping-off point to launch writing. On days when I don't have anything I immediately want to write about, I go to this living document or the notepad on my phone and find inspiration that way.
Bottom line: don't let your ideas become lost to the wind. Maybe you'll never use them, or maybe they'll be used in ways that you never expected. Either way, your ideas are always worth exploring.
