The way I organize ideas and thoughts vary.
Because I am a right-brain creative I don't have one specific way of capturing ideas.
That said, there IS a central source of organization and retrieval.
I learned a LOT of this from Tiago Forte and his Building a Second Brain program.
The main area I keep my ideas organized is within the folder structures on my devices.
For that I use Tiago's PARA system
With the PARA structure, everything is synced across my devices.
But let's deal with idea organization
The main central location for ALL my ideas is within Evernote. Because I have Evernote on all my devices, I can easily capture thoughts, ideas, pics…whatever.
And, I set up the PARA idea organization structure in Evernote as well.
So, for example, if I have a thought about email marketing I capture it in Evernote and then move it to the “email marketing” notebook.
When I do any outlining for a course or program, I may do that in Evernote, Google Docs, or even a Mindmap.
But the KEY is…the CENTRAL location for me to start looking for the ideas I captured are within Evernote.
Here's an example
So what does this mean to keep your ideas organized?
It means you no longer need to “choose how” to store, where to organize etc.
As long as you have your ideas organized with a structure (like PARA) duplicated across your devices, you will know where to look.
Let's look at this idea organization example in practice:
When I look for something I go to Evernote first.
If it's not in the notebook, I check my iCloud/mac
If it's not there, then I check google drive
The thing I need is usually in one of those three places. Because they are my main capture sources.
Now.
Let's say I need to find an email I wrote.
Guess what. My main writing tool Ulysses, has the same PARA structure.
This means I can…
organize ideas for writing:
Do you see how I organize my ideas on all my devices?
The same projects, folder names etc.
So with this in place, I am free to go wherever I feel comfortable and brainstorm🙂
Knowing where my ideas are organized so I can find and retrieve them later🙂