Hi Reader,
How many ideas have you forgotten this year?
Most people forget around 50% of new information within an hour and approximately 70% within 24 hours.
That means that by this time tomorrow, most of what you thought today will be gone.
And if youâre not actively capturing your best ideas, youâre letting them slip away forever.
What's even worse is we don't capture our own ideas, our minds become a storage unit for everyone else's.
I used to write down dozens of ideas every day.
But you know what?I never looked at them again.
And when I actually needed them? It was like they never existed.
I canât tell you how many times I thought, âIf only I could go back and find that one idea...â
And it kills me to think that we all have amazing ideas just sitting around, trapped in notebooks or buried in notes apps.
But when we need them most, we canât find them.
I found myself coming back to a method I used when I was around 14 years old.
It's basically a quick 10 second system for capturing.
Along with a 10 minute practice of reflecting, reviewing, and resurfacing your best ideas.
I donât do it as often as I want to, but when I do?
Itâs like unlocking an archive of my own mind.
It makes me go why wasn't I doing this all these years.
And today, Iâm breaking it down so you can start using it too.
Because if youâve ever felt like youâll never have another great idea again, this system changes that.
Because the truth isâyou probably already have all the ideas you need.
You just need a way to access them.
Why We Lose Our Best Ideas
We assume our brains will just remember things. But memory doesnât work that way.
We have 6,000 thoughts per day on average.
Most ideas arenât lost.
Theyâre buried.
Buried under distractions, responsibilities, and new thoughts.
We also donât realize that the value of an idea isnât always obvious the moment we have it.
Some of the best ideas feel random at first, but if you review them over time, patterns start to emerge.
Thatâs why I use this 5-step system to capture, retrieve, refine, and act on ideas.
Because instead of just storing ideasâyouâre building a vault of knowledge you can access when you need it.
It's worth doing as a habit daily for me, but I find that a project or problem I'm working on sets the scope for what I look for in the following retrieval process.
Step 1: Capture Notes as They Come
Let's redefine the bar for what is an idea worth capturing in your notes.
Because I think most of us think you need some idea that stands in front of Shark Tank or comes out like Hemingway's writing.
And it's shame because we're losing out on so many gems, from missing the moment when it's time to capture.
If you have thousands of ideas per year, the worst case scenario is that some of them are good.
Most of them are bad.
And you have a deeper understanding of yourself and things you care about.
That to me alone is worth making this a practice.
I'm willing to bet that you'd have 10 notes a day in your phone every day this month if you followed this core concept:
The idea worth writing down is really a thought + moment of joy for having discovered that thought.
When you can articulate a goal clearly that has felt messy for months, your brain gets a little spark.
It's nothing to write home about.
No real intent to publish.
Just this satisfaction for having caught that thought for a moment.
It can be as short as one or two words if it takes you back to that idea.
This is how comedians use set lists to remember their jokes on the smallest piece of paper.
I've found that most of my notes are captured less than 10 words at time.
That same idea that took 10 seconds to capture might take 10 hours for me to manufacture.
So it's very critical to capture an idea even if it's not fully fleshed out yet.
Step 2: The 24-Hour Reflection
At the end of the day, take 2-5 minutes to skim and scroll through what you wrote down.
- Some ideas will be mehâothers will stand out.
- No pressure to actâjust observe whatâs interesting.
- Itâs a light touchpoint. Youâre not overthinking, just filtering.
It builds a habit of quick reflection without getting stuck in perfectionism.
Something I'm doing more right now is adding to the note if something pops up, but not forcing it.
This can be a satisfying way to build on existing ideas.
Step 3: The 7-Day Review
Most of us can't remember what we had for lunch a few days ago.
In 7 days, if we had 6,000 thoughts a day on average, that means we would have had 42,000 thoughts that are opportunities to capture.
If you're capturing about 10 notes a day, that's 70 notes you scroll through daily.
I know this sounds like a lot, but I scroll them the way I'd scroll on social feeds.
A few of them might make me stop for an extra second or two.
Youâll notice some ideas keep showing up.
Thatâs a sign of something important.
Youâll see connections between different notes.
Still no pressure to add anything. You're just time traveling back to different moments where you felt creative.
Step 4: The 30-Day Scroll
Once a day, scroll through back through the past 30 days of notes.
- Treat it like a newspaper or an app feedâjust browse.
- Some ideas will feel irrelevantâbut others will suddenly make sense.
- I use my laptop for this so the arrows are very easy to hold down and scroll very quickly
A random thought you had a month ago might be the missing piece to something youâre working on today.
When you give ideas time to marinate, they can evolve into something far more useful.
Step 5: Long-Term Retrieval
Everyday I'll end this review or start it sometimes with looking at what I wrote a year or two ago.
This doesn't take as long as you think because of how fast you can access these in your native notes app.
Itâs wild how much past-you knew that current-you forgot.
Youâll see ideas that felt small at the time but are now way more relevant.
This is how you stack ideas togetherâturning fragments into real projects.
Itâs like having a conversation with your past self.
And past-you was onto something.
Life Plans Are a Good Enough Reason to Take Notes
This isnât just about remembering ideas for work, emails, or creative projects.
Itâs about figuring yourself out.
If youâre the instrument, then learning how to play yourself is the most important skill you can develop.
So much of what you capture in the moment is about youânot just what you need to get done.
- What excites you
- What drains you
- What youâre naturally good at
- What patterns keep repeating in your life
If you allow this process to happen organicallyâcapturing things as they comeâyou wonât spend months or years trying to manufacture the same self-discovery moments over and over again.
Most of us spend so much time trying to figure out who we are only when there's some crisis that demands it.
But if you take notes along the way, you start to see the blueprint of your own thinking, your own strengths, and your own direction.
Life is a longer game than most games we play.
So let your notes become your cheat codes.
This System Rewires Your Brain
Keep in mind that I'm not perfect and I'll miss days or do these steps out of order.
I don't have trouble capturing new ideas.
I've had to focus on making this system so that I actually review them.
The biggest thing Iâve noticed is that feeling of âIâll never have another great idea againâ fades away.
You realize your best ideas arenât lostâtheyâre just waiting to be resurfaced.
And when you build this system into your life, itâs like having an ongoing conversation with yourself across time.
Try this for a week. See what ideas come back.
Comment below: Whatâs one great idea you forgot and wish you had saved?
P.S. If you want a hand with starting or growing a podcast, book a free strategy call here. Or take my Podcast Audit quiz here.
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