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Always carry notes with you
July 31st, 2008We all have genius ideas that come and go and if you’re like me, you forget half of them. My best ideas come when I’m walking, at the gym or in the car and never when I really try to find one. What’s good is that I don’t have to spend hours thinking, it just comes to me when I don’t expect it, but what’s bad is that a couple of hours later, I don’t remember anything. I learned it the hard way, but now I always carry with me a little something to take notes.
Just take notes
I usually have my ipod touch with me all the time, so that’s what I use to take notes. Because it also act as a PDA and not only an iPod, I’m sure I always have it on me. I even have it with me at the gym because I listen to music so I really carry it everywhere. I usually avoid to have it with me in the pool, but that’s another story. When I think about something I think is a genius idea, I simply make note of it and when I look at the same idea a week later, it might not be a genius idea anymore, but at least I can re-evaluate the idea. On the opposite, when I look at it a week later and feel like it’s the best thing in the world, I’m glad I wrote it down.
Create an ideas backlog
You know these days when you simply don’t know what to write about? Well, it won’t happen anymore if you write down every idea you have. When I don’t know what to write about, I simply read my notes and pick a little something I feel would be good to talk about. This way, I don’t waste two hours just wondering what I should write about and I can take that extra two hours to do some useful stuff for my websites.
Ideas filtering
Have you ever written posts just because you felt you had to write? Have you written posts you weren’t proud of? Well, with an ideas backlog, it also act as an ideas filter. You might write down a hundred of ideas, but only pick five of them in the end because the other 95 weren’t that good after all. This way, you make sure you always write quality content and don’t write impulsive posts. By impulsive posts I’m talking about articles you think are awesome, but when you read them a week later, they aren’t that great anymore.
Bottom line, wether it’s your cell phone, iPod, laptop or a simple piece of paper, always carry a little something with you to write down your ideas.
13 Responses to “Always carry notes with you”
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Quality of impulses posts can vary from person to person. I am rarely dissapointed with stuff I wrote on impulse… Unless it was 4am/hungry/angry – those are dark impulses.
I also try not to let ideas brood for too long because I know that I tend to overthink it and end up spoiling it.
Most of my planning for blog goes not to ideas but to order of posts. I really like the style when post is not alone but references to the previous posts or is referenced by digest posts. Some blogs make greate use of this technique and you can start with one post and continue reading for hours, hopping to other posts. I don’t know if I can build that in my blog, but I am going to try.
Good points you raise there Rarst, it’s true quality of impulse posts can vary from person to person. I do also write impulse posts and they usually are pretty good too, but I think I get better success when I think a little bit about it, I can go a little further into the subject.
referencing other posts is one of the best technique to increase your bounce rate and to keep the readers on your site.
Heh. I’m a former reporter and current PR guy. I’ve always got a notebook and pen handy.
That’s good advice…
Good points here and you know: I lot of good ideas from history is first fasten on a napkin
I do the same and also I take a pic with my Nokia mobile phone to capture the idea or moment. Great to have it all digitalised you know.
Btw: Thanks for the add at BlogCatalog – nice to meet you!
“I lot of good ideas from history is first fasten on a napkin” – So true!
No problems for the add at BlogCatalog, I look forward to reading more comments from you!
Okay Ben, you must be a mind reader, I just wrote a post to be published on this same exact subject, oh well, I will still publish mine, I just don’t want you to think I’m a copypact
JR
Haha, extremely interesting. I’m looking forward to reading your post!
I totally agree with your post my brother. Unless you’re a superior minded person that has an ‘elephant memory’ slash ‘cobra photographic memory’ you won’t be needing your handy-dandy notebook with a green crayon. It’s really dependable because you canot tell when your ‘inner generator of creativity’ starts to pump out it’s creative juices. I’m be looking forward in reading your stuff here. Ta’ta’!
just a correction, “I’m looking forward in reading your stuff…”
my bad! ^^,
Thanks for your comment Karl!
[...] is the kind of day I had to look at my iPod to figure out what to write (See Always carry notes with you to understand the reference to the iPod!). That’s perfectly fine and that’s why I make [...]
failing to plan is planning to fail. If anybody actually did sit down and go, hmm i have to write a post, then you need to stop what your doing and rethink what niche your in.
The posts should flow and you should be enthusiastic about posting daily, yes daily, why daily? show your readers you mean business, too busy to do it everyday? well then you better be a spy becuase a blog post takes 20 minuites to write and check.
Sometimes and days you dont feel like blogging? What the hell are you doing on the days you do? writing one post and feeling good? Wrong, write 5 posts , post 1 and keep 4 in backup or save them to autopost over the next 4 days giving you a chance to unwind.
Rules number one of bloggin, always have backup posts for jst in case, your viewers dont care if your ill theyll simply not come back if they see no new posts in a week so have at least 4 prepared that arnt time specific (i.iw dont wrote a post on the “recent news” in 10 days its old.
Now ive basiclly wrote a blog post on here lol XD
Got to say tho love your blog, the way you write is very opinion stirring, good, bad, not sure maybe your leaving too much un said
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Tyrone create as last blog post..Traffic Tips For 2008 Part 1
>What the hell are you doing on the days you do? writing one post and feeling good? Wrong, write 5 posts , post 1 and keep 4 in backup or save them to autopost over the next 4 days giving you a chance to unwind.
My brain doesn’t appreciate milking it for posts.
I can write two posts instead of one easily but chaining them just because I have some time feels crappy.