Never Forget An Idea

We have all have great ideas that are floating in our minds. They come when we are intentionally thinking of certain topics, or sometimes they come to us while we are driving, in the shower, working out, eating, in our conversations with others, at work, etc… Everyone gets ideas all throughout the day. According to research by UCLA, the average person has 70,000 thoughts per day.

I bet you remember having a great idea that was going to change the world. But what happened to it? Where did it go? Have you ever had a brilliant thought, and then, later on, forgot what it was? You knew this thought was amazing and you said you would never forget it, but what happened? You did! The greatest lie we tell ourselves is, “I’ll remember that.”

The greatest lie we tell ourselves is, “I’ll remember that.”

The issue isn’t that we don’t have ideas, it’s that we don’t remember what they were.

Great ideas get lost if not written down and collected. Too many ideas come and go through our minds only to be forgotten. You can’t rely on memory, you have to take the time to collect them by writing them down. If you don’t collect ideas, you will forget what ideas you had and lose the potential within them. Think about how many amazing ideas have been lost in the sea of forgetfulness. French Composer Hector Berlioz said, “Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.”

If you do not take the time to write down and collect your ideas you will eventually lose them, that’s a fact. When you lose ideas, you lose the potential for incredible opportunities that could have been. What a tragedy that we would forget such seeds of greatness and not take the time to write down every idea that pops into our mind. If we don’t collect our ideas we are in danger of missing our future. Government official Paul Nitze said, “One of the most dangerous forms of human error is forgetting what one is trying to achieve.”

Collect as many ideas as you can. Write down everything that comes to your mind. Remember ideas birth more ideas, however, if you are not collecting your ideas you won’t be able to birth new ones. I suggest you have a notebook, an app, or something that you can carry with you at all times. You need to be able to capture your thoughts on the fly. Author John Steinbeck said, “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”

You handle your ideas by writing them down and collecting them. You cannot deal with an idea that you do not remember. So, keep a file of your ideas. Break them into subjects, topics, issues, that you are thinking about. Always have a system of collecting your ideas. It takes great discipline, but the reward of a better future and more opportunity is well worth the effort. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is their ability to act on great ideas. You cannot be successful and act on great ideas if you forget what they were.