5 Minutes To A Better Nights Sleep

The other night I woke up with my mind going a million miles an hour. I got up and spent five minutes writing down everything that was on my mind. All the worries and tasks. I also wrote down the appointment that had come to mind along with the great idea for a blog post. I went back to bed and Viola… I was asleep in 5 minutes. Somehow writing all these things down really worked.

This excerpt is from the Success Begins Today blog, which has an interesting article on what keeps us awake at night. Most of the time, it is our thoughts, worries and to-dos.

We have all heard that we should write everything down as we think of it, and get it out of our heads. Success Begins Today has some good advice and has created a nice template which helps capture all of those the thoughts.

Full Article [via Success Begins Today]

15 17 Ways To Collect and Organize Ideas

LearningNerd.com had a good article on 15 ways to collect and organize ideas. I have added two (2) more from the vault of The Efficient Executive. Hence, 15 has now become 17. Please share your ideas in the comments.

From LearningNerd.com

Like lightning, ideas tend to strike when least expected (and they can be quite shocking). But you never think of them when you need to! I hate nothing more than to get a good idea only to know that I’ll forget it before I can write it down. So, here are a few tips and tools to capture those bursts of creative energy:

Collecting Ideas

• Get a PDA or Pocket PC.


• Get a notebook or my personal favorite, the free PocketMod. As for a pen, you could buy one of those useful mini-pens made specifically to fit inside your wallet — or you could get a Swiss Army knife that includes a pen.


• As commenter Brad Shorr suggested, keep your notebook next to your bed to keep track of those crazy, late-night ideas.


• Keep a plain text file or other document on your computer just for listing those random ideas.


• Use your phone to send yourself emails or make online sticky notes via text messaging.


• Get one of those mobile digital recorders.


• Use your phone to leave yourself messages.


• Use a service like Posticky or Evoca to save your recordings online.


• If you’re already working at your computer and you have an idea to record, Springdoo and Slawesome let you send audio emails. This works especially well along with Gmail's built-in audio player.


• Or, if you need to access your notes from any computer, use one of the many online note-taking services out there. See Fifty Ways to Take Notes for a great list of these.


• [From The Efficient Executive] - Take notes and collect ideas in the shower.

Organizing Ideas

• Add some extra info (like the date or what you were doing at the time) next to your ideas to help yourself remember the whole thought. See Harry Potter: A Great Example of GTD and Idea Capture.


• Keep all of your ideas in separate emails and use Gmail’s labeling feature to organize them. You might even want to create a separate email account just for ideas and notes.


• If you like to list your ideas in a text document, just make one file for each project you have and organize them in folders.


• If you prefer paper, use different colored sticky notes and stick them on larger pieces of paper to group your ideas together. To keep track of everything, keep all the paper in a 3-ring binder and use dividers to separate ideas for different projects.


• Many of the services listed on Fifty Ways to Take Notes allow for easy organizing, like Yahoo! Notepad and Backpack.


• [From The Efficient Executive] - Try Google Notebook to collect and organize files.

I’m currently using an unorganized combination of several of the above methods until I decide which I like best. How do you keep track of your random ideas?

Clip and collect the web with Google Notebook

Another day, another cool new Google product. This time, it's Google Notebook, designed to give you a repository for all the information you find on [and off] the web.

[Google Notebook] give[s] you an online "notebook" where you can organize all your research, add personal notes to it, and share it with others. Google Notebook surfs along quietly with you as you browse, letting you clip and annotate whatever text, images, and links that help answer your question, all without ever leaving the webpage you're on.

Currently Google Notebook is limited to Firefox and Internet Explorer. Once you've signed in, you can install a Firefox extension that lets you sign into Google Notebook and add pages, notes, and annotations to your Google Notebook from any web page, basically working like an online version of the Scrapbook extension for Firefox.

[In true Google fashion, one of the most powerful aspects is the ability to search all your notebooks very quickly for any snippet of information.]

Though there don't seem to be a lot of "social" aspects to Google Notebook, it'll be interesting to see if Google decides to head in that direction. Anyone out there excited about getting their Google Notebook started?

http://www.google.com/notebook/ [Google Notebook]

Lifehacker.com

Take note of that idea...NOW!

Have you ever been in the shower and had an epiphany? That great idea or thought that you didn't want to lose? Personally, I have...many times.

One of the best kept secrets to capturing thoughts in the shower is nothing knew in the scuba diving world. Dive slates, as they are often called, are writing tablets that divers use to communicate underwater.

They come in various shapes and sizes, so find one that fits your needs and give it a shot!

Here is a link to an online scuba shop that sells dive slates:
http://www.scuba.com/shop/product.asp_category_249

Curtis H.