Carry A Notebook
“After a midday dinner, Beethoven embarked on a long, vigorous walk, which would occupy much of the rest of the afternoon. He always carried a pencil and a couple of sheets of music paper in his pocket, to record chance musical thoughts.” I came across that handy little gem in Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, and couldn’t help but remember David Byrne’s twenty-first century hack, carrying a dictaphone in his back pocket.
It’s astounding to me how many of the most prolific individuals across history have been fastidious about capturing ideas. Readers of this blog might remember the anecdote David Kelley once told me about his friend, Robin Williams, and how he always carried a yellow legal pad everywhere he went.
“That’s all well and good for those creative, artsy types,” one might reply. “But I’m a hedge fund manager. Legal pads and music sheets don’t work for me.” Not so fast, my friend. There’s hope for you, too. I happened across a fantastic detail about a famous hedge fund manager, a guy named Jeff Bezos. Things have worked out alright for him in the idea space…
The fantastic The Everything Store (h/t to reader Jacob, member of the ideaflow council, for the great recommendation) details Jeff Bezos’ transformation from quantitative hedge fund manager to launcher of internet revolutions. I was struck by an errant observation: “At DESCO, Bezos displayed many of the idiosyncratic qualities his employees would later observe at Amazon. He was disciplined and precise, constantly recording ideas in a notebook he carried with him, as if they might float out of his mind if he didn’t jot them down…”
He was right! They would float away if he didn’t jot them down! It’s a well-established phenomenon that ideas tend to strike at inopportune moments, which is to say, the very moments when we are likely to neglect documentation. As we often say at the d.school, “If you don’t capture it, it didn’t happen.”
But what about the question of digital vs analog? I’ve mentioned my preference elsewhere. I’ve also observed that my friend and most-interesting-man-in-the-world candidate, Henrik Werdelin, recently made the transition from notebooks to self-email.
What’s best for you? The most important element to consider is friction. Robin Williams once remarked, regarding his own choice, that, “I write on big yellow legal pads - ideas in outline form when I'm doing stand-up and stuff. It's vivid that way. I can't type it into an iPad – I think that would put a filter into the process.”
I’ve observed there are two kinds of friction: the self-editing-friction that often accompanies writing on a screen, and the lost-into-the-ether-friction that accompanies forgetting one’s notepad. It’s really a personal decision which works best for you.
The main thing is: be fanatical about capturing ideas somewhere.
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