Ideas and how to retain them

Where do I get my inspirations from? Easy. I get inspired by a lot of things. I see or read or hear something, and I get an idea. The problem is how to retain it. I might go to an art gallery and see a painting that inspires me. The inspiration I get very often has little to do with the original work. I don’t want to copy a certain painting, I want to retain and work and pass on the inspiration that came to me by looking at that painting. So how do I do that? Taking a picture of that painting doesn’t seem to work. When I look at it later, it doesn’t talk to me in the same way. The other solution is key words, but on their own they also lose strength. I tried different apps, like Evernote, OneNote, google keep. They are definitely useful but what I would need is an app that helps me identify and retain my mental process, that goes from the trigger, i.e. the painting or book or conversation, to the excitement that precedes the idea, to the idea itself. I somewhat think that it would work in columns or panels. Brief description or picture of the work; raw impressions, ways of translating it into my creative world. While I wait for somebody to come up with this ideas app, I might just stick to a notebook, and then read it aloud into google docs and organise it later .

Why do I find it more useful in retaining ideas than writing on Evernote on my phone? Two reasons: I can’t type as fast as I think, but also in my notes I doodle and also my writing changes with my emotions and so the written note seems to retain more of my mood at the time of writing.

As I said, I get inspired by a lot of things, so I’m never short of ideas, but still, a lot of thoughts get lost and perhaps some of them are good thoughts.

Originally posted on medium