Does this sound familiar? You’re slowly drifting off to sleep when you come up with a great line for the song or paper you’ve been working on all day. It’s such a great idea, in fact, that you just know you’ll remember it in the morning. Happy to have finally come up with the perfect line, you nod off, smiling and peaceful.

In the morning, of course, it’s gone. All that you remember is that there’s something you should remember.

Or you’re talking to a business associate on the phone, when you remember that tomorrow is your nephew’s/sister-in-law’s/best friend’s birthday and you need to stop and pick them up a card on your way home. Filing that thought away under “to do later” you finish your call, leave work, and drive home, all the time thinking “isn’t there something I was supposed to do today…?”

Ideas are cheap, memory is expensive

We humans are exceptionally good at thinking up stuff. Sit down for two minutes with a pad of paper and try to come up with all the things you can make out of an orange, and you’ll see – after the first couple easy ones, you’ll start thinking up all sorts of crazy stuff (somebody actually thought up the idea of sticking cloves in an orange and hanging it on a Christmas tree, after all).

But we’re not very good at remembering all those ideas. Psychologists say we can hold from 5 to 9 thoughts in our immediate memory at any given time, meaning that, on average, the last 7 things you’ve thought are all you get. Add #8 to the list, and something falls out.

Our long-term memory is much better, but the process of moving items from short-term to long-term memory is quite complex and isn’t really “on-demand” – as anyone who has struggled to master organic chemistry can attest.

So, we have lots and lots of ideas and only a limited memory to hold them in before we lose them.

Capture everything

The solution is to develop the habit of capturing everything important that crosses your mind, when it crosses your mind. Ideally, you would settle on a single point of capture, something that you can keep with you all the time and always rely on.

Many people prefer a high-quality pocket notebook for this, a Moleskine or one of the increasingly available (and cheaper) knock-offs. These notebooks have rigid covers, often vinyl- or even leather-covered, with a decent-quality paper (so ink doesn’t bleed through easily) and a pocket in the back (which I have never used, but it’s nice to know it’s there…). Most have an elastic band to hold them closed and a fabric bookmark bound in with the pages.

These features offer a number of benefits over the drug-store standard 69-cent spiral notebook:

• They’re pretty rugged, which means they stand up well to back pocket carrying and purse clutter.
• Pages don’t easily rip out.
• Their rigidity makes them easy to write on in your hand or on your lap.
• They look professional, making it more likely you’ll take it out and use it in working environments.
• There are no wires to catch on anything.
• The bookmark helps you easily find a new blank page to write on.
• People seem to enjoy using them.

But you don’t have to spend $7-10 US on a notebook; plenty of people manage just fine with the already-mentioned wire-bound pocket notebook. Or you can use a stack of index cards, bound with a binder clip (the famous hipster pda). Or a pad of post-its, or a composition book, or a journal, or your dayplanner, or anything else as long as a) it’s easy and comfortable for you to use, and b) you’ll keep it with you everywhere.

There are digital solutions, too. If you’re very comfortable with your cell phone, you might Jott everything to yourself – leave a voicemail that will be transcribed and forwarded to your email inbox (or to Evernote if you’re using it). Or leave a message on your home answering machine. Or email notes to yourself, or SMS them. Again, the only criteria is that you’ll actually use whatever system you set up, regardless of circumstances.

OK, it’s captured. Now what?

Your capture device is a kind of inbox, so treat it as an inbox – that is, get in the habit of reviewing and processing everything on a regular basis (probably at the same time you process your desk-bound inbox). The ideas you capture do no more good locked away in your notebook than they do forgotten in the flow of a conversation or in the aftermath of a good night’s sleep.

Remember that the space you use for capture is not long-term reference storage. While you might jot down a couple of things you know you’ll need later in the day, you still need to have a trustworthy system for archiving and using the information you collect over the course of the day.

So process the phone numbers, addresses, names, and URLs you collect into your PIM (personal information manager, e.g. Outlook, Palm Desktop, Lotus Notes). Add the tasks you remembered or thought up over the course of the day to your todo list. Ideas for projects you’re working on can go into your project files.

The random ideas you have and want to hold onto present a special problem. I add these to my todo list, under the category “Think About” and keep them sorted to the bottom. (I use Toodledo; since my most common way of sorting my list is by date, I just don’t put dates on Think About items which keeps them safely out of my way in day-to-day use.) Every now and again – during a weekly review, for instance – I’ll check out the Think About items and see if there’s anything I’m ready to act on.

Trust the system

Get into the habit of always capturing and processing ideas as they occur to you. If you can’t trust yourself to do this, you’ll always worry that there’s something escaping your mind. If you’re not capturing and processing your thoughts, then there probably is something escaping your mind – lots of somethings, marching like lemmings over the cliff and into eternity! By getting used to using your system, you’ll find a lot of that stress is released, and you can focus on stressing out about more important stuff, like does Bob in marketing like you or like like you?

I’m curious about what other people use to capture their ideas – and how they handle the random “neat thought” problem. Let me and the rest of Lifehack’s readers know in the comments!

Dustin M. Wax is a contributing editor and project manager at lifehack.org. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and women's studies in Las Vegas, NV. His personal site can be found at dwax.org.

Share This

Related Posts

• Back to Basics: Your Inbox
• Back to Basics: Processing
• 4 Random Tips to Get More Done with Your PC
• Innovate in the Downturn – 7 Things You Must Do
• Six Great Ways to Ruin a Brainstorm
• How to Improve Your Memory
• Playing Well with Others
• Beyond Test Taking: Learning to Handle Information
• Where are the aids for increasing GENUINE personal productivity?
• Simplifying Your Information Intake
• Unleash your Inner Genius
• Journaling: How I Remember the Details
• How to Use a Notebook to Make 2008 the Best Year Ever
• How Reserving a Domain Name Can Boost Creativity
• The Search for My Ideal GTD App

Don’t depend on answers in uncertain times

We live in a world that seems endlessly hungry for answers: preferably quick, unambiguous, definitive, once-and-for-all, simple answers. We want to be told what to do, how to solve our problems, how to live our lives to best effect. At work, bosses grind out the old chestnut, “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.” Politicians running for office are expected to come up with the answers to the nation’s greatest difficulties, long before they ever get to the elected position that would allow them to see any of the available, detailed information.

In our personal lives as well, we want nice, simple recipes for coping. Hence the huge popularity of articles with titles like: “Five simple ways to . . .” or “How to deal with . . . once and for all.”

But what if I suggested that answers aren’t all they’re expected to be; and that what you need most of all are more questions, even if — especially if — you have no idea how to answer them?

Answers too easily prove wrong

The trouble with answers is that they are quite often wrong: anywhere from totally, hopelessly wrong to just far enough off the right track to produce unexpected future problems. Questions are rarely wrong enough to be useless. Even the wrong questions can lead to unexpected but useful insights. The right question is worth much more than the right answer, since nearly every answer applies only in certain given circumstances, whereas a good question is a good question almost anywhere.

Science used to be based rigorously on questions, not answers. Every ‘answer’ was judged to be no more than provisional — a theory only — waiting to be disproved by someone with better techniques, more data or greater insight. No area of scientific knowledge was out-of-bounds to questioners; however firmly, or for however long, its theories had been accepted. Sir Isaac Newton supplied the final answer to how the universe worked, until new techniques came along, Einstein arrived, and more than two centuries of scientific ‘knowledge’ was overturned. Now science too is pushed, pressurized and exhorted to produce definite answers, so that the conclusions of research are instantly announced as fact by the media — only to be overturned later by new ‘facts’.

Answers represent dead ends

The more definitive and widely accepted the ‘answer’, the more it prevents people from seeing how it will turn out to be wrong. Once you think you know, for a fact, that things work in a particular way — or the answer to problem ‘a’ is always technique ‘b’ — there’s no need to explore any further. Of course, over time, the world changes, but almost nobody looks to see if that affects what they already know for sure — until the unthinkable happens and our nice, simple answers stop working.

The world of business is especially prone to relying on widely accepted ‘right’ answers — until they aren’t answers any more. Only then do people run around in a panic trying to find some other way. And when they find one, what do they do? You’ve got it. They quickly stop looking further. Having so many problems to deal with, they gratefully shelve that one as ’solved’ and forget about it. As one of the guest authors on my Slow Leadership blog explained recently, they play ‘Whack-a-mole Management.’ A problem shows its head; they whack it with some suitable mallet, forget it, and look around to see where the next one will pop up.

Answers kill creativity

Creativity is only needed when you don’t know the best way to do something — or suspect the accepted answer isn’t as good as everyone else seems to think. If you truly believe that there is one, right answer to a problem and you already know what it is, what is there to be creative about?

Questions, of course, are exactly the opposite. They are the life-blood of all creativity. One of the main differences between naturally creative people and the rest is that the creative types are never satisfied with whatever answers they have. They distrust them on principle. Give them an answer and they get cranky and try to prove it isn’t an answer at all. Give them a question, and they’re as happy as a child playing in a sand pit. First they create this answer, only to trample it down and use the ’sand’ to build another one. What annoys ‘practical’ people about creative types is that they never stop asking questions. What drives creative people wild about ‘practical’ types is that they rarely start.

Don’t build your life around what you think you already know

What takes this topic out of the realm of philosophy and into everyday life is the understanding that any life built around a set of supposedly firm, known answers is like a huge tree in the path of a hurricane. It looks wonderfully solid and unshakeable, but when the winds get wild enough, they are going to snap it into matchwood. With no capacity to bend or change under the onslaught, it either survives until the next attack — perhaps badly damaged — or is destroyed. All it can do is resist and hope for the best.

People who know the answers in advance — or believe they do — suffer the same fate. They resist or ignore changing circumstances until something comes along that is stronger than they are. Then their carefully constructed, stable lives are ripped up and ruined. With no other options, and little practice in finding any, they are often damaged beyond repair.

In contrast, the small bushes and saplings bend and twist. Some are uprooted and some are damaged, but most make it through, despite being far, far weaker than the great tree now lying dead and in ruins. Buildings designed to flex can survive earthquakes. Rigid ones collapse.

A life is better built around questions

When you build your life and career around questions, you’re always looking to see how you can find better ways of dealing with whatever events throw at you. Since you don’t assume you already know all the answers, you keep exploring — often finding along the way all kinds of unexpected and wonderful treasures you didn’t know were there. Change is easy and natural. If parts of your life get blown apart, your creativity can quickly get to work to make good the damage. Even in bad times, you probably won’t just survive; you’ll find life’s storms have opened up pathways that weren’t open to you before.

Here’s one recipe for becoming stronger, wiser and much more able to survive bad times:

1. Don’t seek to have all the answers; seek out more questions, even if they seem to threaten what you think you know.
2. Always distrust what answers you have now; they’re probably less firm that they appear to be.
3. Don’t accept others’ answers, however loudly they parade them as incontrovertible facts; almost nothing out there is as secure as that.
4. Above all, don’t trot out neat, second-hand solutions. Stick to messy, first-hand problems, ask questions continually and find your own way forward.

After graduating from Cambridge University, Adrian's career spanned local and national government, a series of corporate executive positions, and a partnership in a global consulting and business services firm, from which he retired as CEO of their US consulting arm. He runs two blogs: Slow Leadership and Slower Living and has published two books on the practice of leadership. His latest project is These Intersting Times.

Share This

Related Posts

• Quantity Breeds Creativity
• Unleash your Inner Genius
• Welcome Failure
• Look for the Solution within the Problem
• Back to Basics: Processing
• Boredom Can Be Good For You
• The Lifehack Productivity Bookshelf
• Six Great Ways to Ruin a Brainstorm
• Lifehack Live for April 28, 2008: Lifehack.org Reader’s Questions
• We Ask, You Answer: What Do You Want to Know?
• How to Fuel Your Idea Machine
• 29 Worn Out Perspectives in Need of the “Oh Really?” Factor
• We Ask, You Answer: Your Quirky System
• Where You Are Depends on How You Look at Things
• We Ask, You Answer: Your Questions

Every once in a while, we are entrusted with the task of presentation. It may be to demo a new product, to present a plan or to explain a new process that you’ve helped create. Whatever the reason and however many presentations you’ve given before, it’s something that not everyone is comfortable doing.

Here are some of the presentation techniques that I’ve learnt in my experience to help you conduct an effective presentation.

Setting the stage

Always start with an intro. Take half a minute to introduce yourself to all the attendees. If the demo is between 2 teams, your team has to be introduced as well, in which case it is better to let everyone introduce themselves. I say a half a minute for each person attending. Same goes for the other team in the room or on the phone or on the screen (video conferencing). This way you set the stage for a collaborative, interactive meeting. I will talk more about this later in this post.

Do a brief intro on the subject of the demo. If you are doing a demo of a new product or an updated version of the product, take a few minutes to talk about the product, its purpose, the business need, etc. Take 3 minutes tops.

Reserve a minute to explain the structure of your presentation. Obviously, you have thought through the topics you will cover, the depth to which you will go, etc. So, don’t keep it a secret; provide a “roadmap”. You don’t want anyone getting lost. It is a good habit to give handouts of this “roadmap” to everyone - a one pager.

Setting the stage should take you around 5 to 10 mins, depending on the number of people attending. I say keep the audience to around 10 people to have an effective presentation, unless of course you are Martin Luther King or Obama.

Force a pause

When you dive into the meat of your presentation, do not talk away as if there is no end. It may sound like you are rambling. You do this maybe because you are fast talker by nature or maybe you’re just plain nervous. In any case, a presentation needs “forced pauses”. To be effective, you have to cultivate this habit. You want to give an opportunity for the audience to digest all the information and think through it for a minute or two. A good practice is to plan your “forced pauses” out such that you can invite questions from your audience.

In the beginning, I know it will be tough to implement this but trust me: you will get used to it.

Don’t do all the talking

Make it interactive. Pass the ball around whenever you can. Let everyone participate. Remember when you attended a demo meeting and hoped no one will notice you dozing off. Well, you did that because you were bored. It is not (always) your fault. I say the presenter made it boring. He or she did not invoke your thoughts and make it interesting enough for you. So, when you are the presenter, please don’t make the same mistake. Let everyone participate. Think of it as a few moments you introduce to help you relax and refocus.

Ice-breakers

The most effective presentations or meetings that I’ve attended were those that were informative and enjoyable at the same time. These are meetings where the presenter or an attendee sneaks in some witty remarks - the ice-breakers.

How many, how often and what kind of jokes you introduce will matter here and if you push it too far over the limit, it can kill your presentation and most likely you would never present again. So, I must warn you that this technique is not for everyone. Its success is very dependent on your wits, the timing, the audience and most importantly your presentation style, which will differ from person to person. But if you can work it, you have a powerful presentation tool.

These are some of the many techniques that will make you an effective presenter. You may already be one or you maybe one in the making. Do send in your comments and share your tips and tricks with the rest of the world. Don’t keep it a secret.

From commitments and struggles to teamwork and trust; From learning from mistakes to creating success stories and winning… Raj, the creator of lap31.com, explores the mindset of a leader and what it takes to be one as he shares his own experiences and thoughts through his writing.

Share This

Related Posts

• Six Great Ways to Ruin a Brainstorm
• How to Cut Crutch Words When Giving a Speech
• Delivering Under Pressure
• 7 Ways to Avoid Pointless Meetings
• Considering Presentations
• 4 Tech Tips to Keep Ahead of the Game for New Entrepreneurs
• How to Write (in a thousand words or less)
• The Other Epidemic Of Obesity
• 5 Key Questions When Planning Your Presentation (Presentation Masterclass - Part 2)
• How to Be an Expert (and Find One if You’re Not)
• Presentation Masterclass - Part 1: Introduction
• 10 Steps To Working On The Road
• Where are the aids for increasing GENUINE personal productivity?
• How to Write a Business Letter That Gets Results
• How to Create Connection in the Workplace: A Review of “Fired up or Burned Out” by Michael Lee Stallard