Jot Your Thoughts

We are all familiar with Field Notes, those rather basic, yet timeless, notebooks in which you can do what the name implies, take notes. Beginning a few years ago, the Field Notes people came out with their own Field Notes Brand Books, the first of which was “A Drive into the Gap” by Kevin Guilfoile. It’s a nice, little, fits-in-your-back-pocket-sized book set against the backdrop of Roberto Clemente’s 3,000th and final hit before his early death, the stories and memories that have created a mystery about which bat Clemente actually used for his historic feat, and the relationship of the author to his father who worked with Clemente while with the Pittsburgh Pirates and eventually had a career with the Baseball Hall of Fame before falling victim to Alzheimer’s. 

This little book caused me to reflect on my own memories and ability to remember. Sometimes it seems that our brains pick and choose at random what they want to retain and discard (or hide from us).

But there are things we can do, absent certain medical conditions, to help stimulate our ability to remember. Among them—and we’ve heard this time and again—is to write. This rings true for entrepreneurs, who often carry with them characteristics of creativity and a drive for concept realization. The creative thought process can be as elusive as a Major League curveball. And again, we constantly hear that writing down our thoughts, or even journaling about our day, is one of the best ways to help keep ideas, especially those creative ones that we think are the bee’s knees, from escaping our clutches. 

So the next time you have that spark of creative thought or see a need to remember a key detail, whether it be on a grand scale like a new business idea or on micro scale like remembering who you met with and what you talked about, consider jotting it down. Sometimes the thing you record does not even have any practical application right now, or the day might get away from you as you move on to whatever task is at hand, but having that thing penciled or penned in a convenient notebook—whether it be a trendy Field Notes product or just an old fashioned pad of paper—will increase the odds that one day that thing will come to fruition. 

For what it’s worth, I started this post in a notebook.