If you think it, capture it.
Yesterday, about 2pm, I sat down with a client who’d booked an initial advice session about starting her own business. She was articulate, well dressed, intelligent and had a great idea.
About 5 mins into our chat she looked up and said “Oh, do you have a pen I could borrow, and a piece of paper?”.
Yes, that’s right. This articulate, smart, intelligent client who was planning to start a business AND had booked this session over a week ago, had not thought to bring a pen or any other way to capture the value from our meeting. The ideas had started flowing, neurons were firing (about the only effect I ever have on women) and she had realised in that moment that she was in danger of losing some of this. Too late.
She’s not the only one. I once started a workshop with a roomful of people who all wanted to be consultants and again 5 mins in at least half of them were looking for a pen or asking for some paper.
We spent the next 15 mins or so talking about basic operating habits of a consultant, which include bringing a notepad to a meeting, together with some way of making a mark on it!
How is this relevant to knowing what you want?
If there is one habit that can really help you understand yourself, your own mind and what is nagging at your attention it’s the habit of ubiquitous capture.
One great habit that will help you to know what you want is the habit of capturing any thought that comes into your head so that you can do something useful with it.
Somebody once told me that your brain is for having ideas, not holding ideas; and that the best way to keep a clear head is shorten the distance between having a new thought and capturing it.
You cannot control what floats into your head. All sorts of things do and each time a wild idea floats in, your mind assigns it a place in your head and begins to track it. Then, when you are taking a shower or driving or otherwise distracted, these thoughts will ambush you. Why? Because you’re now tracking it with a micro part of your attention.
The only way to stop this is to create a management system for all that incoming stuff. And it starts with capture – either writing it down or preserving it in some other form.
That’s how I describe it in the book and here’s another way to think about it. You can only pay attention to 7 ± 2 things at once and as your conscious attention jumps around during the day, new ideas, insights, vague thoughts and reminders can easily get lost. I love the tag line on the Field Notes website “I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now”.
Quite.
Want to develop the habit of knowing your own mind? Make a serious attempt to put a capture tool or device within your reach wherever you go. Including all those places were ideas come easily – outside the shower, in the toilet, in your car.
- Put a wipe clean or blackboard in the kitchen
- Find a small note book that goes with your wallet or handbag
- Make yourself a Hipster PDA or several and put them everywhere
As David Allen says, leaving the house without your capture device should feel totally unnatural. You know you’ve cracked it when you feel naked without a pen and something to write on.
And once you have the tools in place, make a new habit of capturing every thought that comes to you. Capture wantonly and without judgement. Why?
Build this habit into your life and nothing will ever get past you. And your mind will stay clear so that you can continue to bring your full attention to whatever you are doing right now. You will become that rare person who is fully present.
You have taught your brain that the idea is safe (so it lets go) and also rewarded it for bringing you a new idea. Your brain likes this. Imagine your brain as a super intelligent person able to make astonishing leaps of insight but with the social skills of a six year old. It likes it when you take note of the ideas and suggestions it brings you. The more you do it, the more new ideas and suggestions will float up from your unconscious.
If you ignore it constantly or make promises you never keep then it will go off in a sulk. Pay attention, note the suggestions down, stick to your promises and you will unleash a flood of insight, ideas, suggestions and connections.
All you have to do to unleash this flood is make sure that wherever you go, you have a way of capturing an idea.
Read more about How Cat Food Can Help You Know What You Want in Part 8: Always Know What You Want:
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