Capturing Ideas is Easy. Reviewing them and creating something new from these ideas requires deliberate planning.

Your system for capturing inspiring ideas should be simple and frictionless.

But your system of reviewing whatever you capture must be deliberate.

Technology makes the first task (capturing ideas) easy. Just go about your day scrolling through the interweb. Find an inspiring idea? Save it. Same goes with analog capture systems (physical notebooks).

Capturing all these great ideas is not useful if it just sits unprocessed.

This is why you need an inbox reconciliation process. Some things to think about.

1. Inbox(es). Have more than one method of capturing ideas. Phones are the most convenient. But some still enjoy the activity of handwriting notes. Both are great. Do what works for you.
2. Set a schedule for processing your inbox. Similar to the sacred time you set aside for writing, set aside some time to process your inboxes.
3. Develop a criteria for processing your inbox. Some ideas seems great at time of capture, but no longer resonate. Dump it for later use and move on. The idea here is to get you moving to something that can yield some content. When you have priorities about how you process notes in your inbox, you can move through your inbox quickly.
4. Breadcrumbs. Set some priorities for the next review session. Once you’ve completed your daily review session, set some guidelines for the next day. Set some ideas that will influence your media consumption the following day. This will refine not only your consumption sessions, but also your follow-on reviews.

When in doubt, focus on reviewing (existing ideas) and producing rather than consuming content.

This post was created with Typeshare