I sometimes have these snippets of ideas blinking through my brain, too small and fragmented to be anything of purpose but those of which I hesitate to let go, whether these are a thought a Tiktok video provoked, a funny imaginary scene I conjured from the character of the book I’m reading, or a certain environment or aesthetic I saw on Instagram that I perhaps would want to realize in the future.
Sometimes I would just wave these off; sometimes I would take screenshots or write in post-it notes even when I knew I’d most likely never see them again.
And then I learned from these book that those little ideas or things that resonated with me are the best seeds for creative work or innovation.
I initially thought I just wasn’t creative enough to realize these ideas, even when I could see fragments of what I could do—what I’m capable of. But when I finally am able to let myself sit down on my desk with an idea of something to create, I just cannot seem to conjure it to life. Well, who am I to think I’m an artist anyway, I would think to myself, or perhaps I just wasn’t smart enough, or I don’t know enough. I have these tiny ideas but they’re just that: fleeting moments of what could be but isn’t.
Then Forte quoted Annie Murphy Paul (author of The Extended Mind) in this book:
“We extend beyond our limits, not by revving our brains like a machine or building them up like a muscle—but by strewing our world with rich materials and by weaving them into our thoughts.”
Those tiny ideas I kept encountering in my brain are apparently the ideas produced from “rich materials” I stumble upon randomly, whether from a book quote, a TikTok video, an argument with someone, a character I love…
The book Building a Second Brain showed me how to capture resonating ideas (among other things), and the Forte provides a system for you to encounter these ideas the moment you might need them in the future, even if you forget about them with his CODE method (which I wouldn’t be talking about here since it’s beyond the scope of my point). Not to mention that ideas have a way of nurturing themselves when you solidify them into a tangible medium.
“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” —David Allen, Getting Things Done (another requote from this book)
The point is, most creative work—if not all—does not start from nothing. Creativity, or innovation, is just connecting things that are already made around you. And this book showed me a system to remember every inspiration I encounter so I would have an environment that will provoke creative work and move my goals forward instead of being stuck in a blank page, or trying to remember where you put ‘that thing I saw a while ago’, or being buried with aimless research, or wasting a painful amount of time trying to maintain a rigid, personal knowledge management system where the organization of ideas seems to be an end in itself. With this book, my brain has more space to come up with ideas, solve problems, and connect things you wouldn’t have otherwise, instead of trying and failing to remember important data.
- Mind changes about this book:
- Taking notes is not an obligation (like how school taught me), and your notes shouldn’t be disposed of after passing an exam—they should be saved and compounded for future purposes.
- Small, fleeting ideas should be saved, however fragmented they feel. Only then will those seeds have space to grow.
- my brain isn’t for carrying ideas—but for making them.
- I do not have to organize my thoughts and ideas inside my head.
- The little information I capture—screenshots, book quotes, pictures of things I find interesting—can be used for a larger idea, and I don’t even have to remember it.
- The fact that I really do not have to remember everything to know them when I need them.
- The other points I learned from this book that I didn’t write about here are: there are other things I learned from this book (along with a way of cultivating your own creativity, expressing ideas, starting something unpredictable, etc.), but if I put them all here, I might as well write a whole book of my own. Tell me if you’d like more, though. or if you have any questions regarding the book. If you also want to learn more about doing creative work, let me know, and I’ll write about it more.
p.s. I wrote about this book first of foremost in this blog because this is so far the most life-changing book I’ve ever read so far. I don’t think I’ve given this enough justice on this blog.
the boring stuff 