Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. -- John Steinbeck My father had a saying he used to repeat often. He always carried around one of those little Mead spiral notebooks, which he liked to call "his brain," and whenever an idea would strike him he'd write it down and say, "If you think it, ink it!" That used to just drive me crazy…but Dad was absolutely right. You can't depend on your meat brain to remember everything, especially when you're in the middle of another task. Nor is it a good idea to drop the task you're working on and go haring off after the new idea. Oh, you can do that, but if make a habit of it you'll never finish anything—and your productivity will be shot to heck. So when you have a random thought … [Read more...]