I am an organizer, synthesizer, and aggregator.  These things come naturally for me.  Systems help me do these three things easier.  I love to figure out new systems that make information easier to access and utilize.  Systems are great because once you have a reliable one in place you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you repeat a task.  In economic language, systems are efficient.  They speed up a progress and give a clearly defined path to success.

I’m currently in the process of reading “Making Ideas Happen” by Scott Belsky.  After I read his book I’ll give an update to this post showing what I’ve learned.  But this post is about how I keep track of ideas.  The follow-up will be how to make the ideas happen.

How I Organize My Thoughts

I want to track and record my ideas and thoughts.  Whether it’s an idea for a blog post, or just a crazy scheme that I want to remember I want to make sure I don’t lose that thought.  To do this I have a loose system and a few tools.  The system I use is similar to Cal Newport’s method of capturing then transferring into master lists.  I call it capture, record and store.

Primary Capturing Tools:

• Notebooks.  I’m still trying to figure out the place for notebooks.  Mostly I use them to write down ideas and things that I have to do that come quickly and go even faster out my brain.  Notebooks are great because you can do anything with them; draw funny pictures; cool graphs (econ nerd remember).  But the most beneficial thing I get from using notebooks is the magical properties of actually writing on paper.  For some reason putting pen to paper unleashes ideas and creativity like nothing else I’ve tried.

• Moleskin.  This does the same thing as notebooks.  But its benefit is that it can go in my back pocket.  Thus it can be carried anywhere.  I haven’t gotten into the habit of taking it everywhere because when I first started using it I used it many for to-dos and I quickly get very disorganized.  I’m going to restrict Moleskin use to doodling, making graphs like the ones on Indexed, or if I have a burning need to hold a pen.
• My Phone.  The phone is the usually the first place where thoughts, to-dos, and ideas go.  I use my phone like some people would use a notebook.  I have an application that let’s me sort different categories: blog ideas; to-dos; reminders; work related stuff.  From here I transfer the information to the next higher-level storing tool like Evernote and the next tool.

High Level Storage Tools:

• Teux Deux (To Do).  It’s a to do tool and doesn’t try to be anything else.  This is my primary storage space for important shit I need to get done and at least remember.  I use it as a substitute for my Google calendar most of the time, because it’s so easy to use.  It’s basically combines the task bar on Google calendar with the actual calendar.  So why bother with Gcal at all?

• Evernote.  I use Evernote to make lists, such as books to read and personal reminders.  I also use it to make templates for emails, notes of books that I read, outlines for blog posts and other random stuff.  It has been a great tool that has replaced using word documents altogether when I want to make many separate entries on different topics.  Very useful, easy to use and great for finding the idea or information you need.

Blog post spreadsheet

How I Organize/Synthesize Information

Because I have a slight obsession (as shown by my 1200 word blog Manifesto) with not being a consumption whore, I have tools to synthesize and aggregate what I take in.  Because I know I am a consumption whore at heart I need to have these systems in place so that I am able to DO SOMETHING with the information I consume.  This is in terms of reading mostly: blogs, books, magazines.

• Diigo and Delicious. I started using Delicious as my bookmarker of choice for storing articles and what not.  But then I found Diigo.  It’s exactly like Delicious but with a few more capabilities.  With Diigo you can hit “Read Later” if you come across a cool article but don’t have the time to read it.  I prefer this to a “unread” bookmark tag.  Diigo also has a tool that always you to “highlight” any part of an article.  Essentially you can take notes with Diigo by highlighting text.  Then when you tag the article and bookmark it, you will see the annotated parts below the link to the original article.

Diigo V4: Research ~ annotate, archive, organize from diigobuzz on Vimeo.

• Notes.  Again I borrow Cal Newport’s method for taking notes in books or from paper media.  I’ll paraphrase his technique but you should really give the article a read.  I adapted it a little to my needs but its essentially the same idea: when you read have a pen with you; when you read a sentence that is particularly striking or is just something you want to remember make a small dot at the beginning of that sentence.  That’s it.  No more sticky notes, highlights, or dog ears.  Then what I usually do is go back through the book and type up my dotted sentences into Evernote.

In one of my next posts, I’ll explain why it’s important to specialize your thoughts.  Meaning that you should use different social media tools to express different ideas and passions.  Your blog shouldn’t be where you talk about everything and anything.  It should have a specific topic (or you should be trying to hone it to something specific).  I’ll explain how I use Brazen Careerist, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Tumblr to express the full spectrum of my passions and interests.

This is how I do things, but what about you?  How to you capture, record and store?  If you do something that works well for you please share so we can learn from your genius.