SolveYourProblem
Article Series: Brainstorming
Brainstorming, Where Do I Begin?
How
To Record Your Brainstorming Ideas
All the great brainstorming sessions in the
world aren’t worth a darn if you forget every great (and not-so-great)
idea you’ve come up with. There’s no excuse for it either,
failing to recall the fruits of a brainstorming session. Not
when there are so many convenient and effective ways to save
those ideas for later use. The following are just some of the
ways to record the ideas you generate in a brainstorm.
1.
Notebooks and Journals
Lined
for strictly verbal ideas, unlined to incorporate images
and diagrams in with the words.
Either way, notebooks are a tried and true method of capturing
great ideas. The advantages are that they’re a portable,
flexible, and fast way of recording information. You don’t’
have to boot
up a notebook, nor do you have to worry about the battery
charge running out of it or finding a place to plug it in.
The disadvantages
are that they’re not as portable as some alternate recording
tools, and notebooks have poor search capabilities, to put
it mildly.
2.
Index cards
Durable
and portable, and incredibly inexpensive, index cards have
an added advantage over notebooks and journals
in that you can restrict each card to a single main idea
and then organize and reorganize the cards as the ideas form,
change,
and develop. You can more easily add, remove, and reorder
ideas using index cards than a notebook. Index cards are
only a starting
point, however, and therein lies they’re disadvantage, for
eventually you’re most likely going to want to transfer the
ideas written there into some electronic form. Unless you
enjoy transcription (or have someone to do it for you), index
cards
might prove to be a bit of a hassle in the long run.
3.
PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants)
It
started out with the Palm Pilot. Then came the Blackberry.
Now there’s the HP
iPaq and hundreds more. Take your pick. Whatever PDA you
select you’ll find the same convenient spontaneity of breaking
it
out, jotting down a quick note, and later synchronizing your
PDA with your computer so that you instantly have all your
notes filed together digitally. This makes for easier reading,
searching, and sharing. Having your ideas stored digitally
also allows you to later edit them and expand upon them,
a feat that can get quite messy with a notebook or journal.
Unlike
PCs, PDAs don’t require a long boot up sequence to power
up. Just press a button and you’re ready to go. The drawback
to
PDAs is that they’re not well-suited for recording images,
sketches, diagrams, etc. Another disadvantage some people
may find with PDAs is difficulty with handwriting recognition.
Some people have better results writing with a stylus than
others.
4.
Micro-cassette or digital audio recorder
A
myriad of companies now manufacture micro-cassette and digital
audio recording
units small enough to fit right into your pocket or sit on
your desk. You can even keep it on your nightstand for those
sudden bursts of unplanned inspiration that hit you in the
middle of the night. Of course, any information recorded
in an audio format will eventually have to be transcribed
one
way or another into print. Fortunately, many digital voice
recorders can now be plugged straight into your computer,
the audio files transferred and then transcribed automatically
by voice recognition software. One other mixed review of
digital
and micro-cassette recorders is that it’s easy to leave yourself
notes and expound upon ideas this way, but it’s not so helpful
for recording visual information, like diagrams and illustrations. Other brainstorming recording ideas include Mind
Maps (see
our article on the subject), idea files and databases, butcher
block paper, and - when all else fails - leaving yourself a
voice mail message. The bottom line is that with all the various
and sundry ways to get your ideas down for easy future retrieval,
there is no excuse for forgetting a good idea anymore.
With all this variety in tools at your disposal, don’t ever
let it be said that you had a great idea once, but forgot it.
# # # # # SolveYourProblem.com
: 2008
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