When do you get your best ideas?
Solutions to dogged problems?
The perfect book title?
Idea for a new service (or the rebranding of an old service)?
The angle on something that made the neurons in your brain explode with delight?
I’ll bet it’s not when you’re at your desk trying to make it happen.
For me, it’s almost always when I’m running. (Or, when I’m walking the dog, showering, getting a manicure…all also on the short list of activities that generate ‘ah-ha!’ moments.)
Funny thing about ah-ha revelations.
I’ve realized that they tend to happen when I’ve gotten enough sleep. Apparently, great ideas are repelled by crankiness — why wouldn’t they be?
Another thing. Despite the universal firm conviction that “I’ll never forget this…it’s too good”…they’re elusive little buggers. They’re slippery.
And just as easily as they slipped into our minds, they flit out.
Knowing how easily these gems are lost has plagued many of my jogs — where I repeat the special idea incessantly ’til I return home and write down the idea.
A few years ago I starting dictating diamond-quality ideas into the Voice Record phone app. It has restored the joy of those jogs, and provides better recall than any scrawled note.
Wondering. Where do those diamonds appear at your feet? And, when they do, how do you capture them?
This blog is originally published in Marilee's newsletter.
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