More than a year ago, in an attempt to wrangle in all the paper in my life along with the great ideas I think I have constantly marauding around in my mind, and to prepare myself for self-employment, I got into a strong productivity kick. There are many systems to do so, the one I chose (after seeing it mentioned at Lifehacker.com) is known as Getting Things Done (or GTD). You’ve heard of it before. If you haven’t, you haven’t missed a whole lot. This particular GTD system was developed and fleshed out by a cat named David Allen. Anyway, there’s a whole cultish, obsessive thing to it which didn’t appeal to me as I was reading about the system and some of its proponents. What did appeal to me was the level of mental discipline required to make it all work.

Wanting to take that mental discipline aspect even further, I found my way to the O’Reilly book Mind Performance Hacks. (Perhaps I also came across this book while reading Lifehacker.com, but it’s also likely that I came across it while perusing the collections at Computer Book Works, the geek-king bookstore that is near where I used to work.) Mind Performance Hacks is a great read, with tips on memorization, effective sleep, nutrition that supports high level brain functioning, and many other things including ORGANIZATION.

Early on, the book offers up a suggestion for organizing your existing ideas, and thereby encouraging your brain to produce more and more ideas. The basic notion is called a “Catch.” In other words, a place to catch the ideas you have, the best of which seem to strike when you’re no where near a computer, notebook, or any other thing that will help you to recall the idea when you’re better able to act on it and develop it. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Although memory is a core human faculty, and developing it will reward you well, as a literate human you still need to process recorded information, whether books full of text or digital files full of audiovisual data. How can you cope with the hurricane of information that pounds your eyes and ears every day?

This chapter will show you how to capture the best of the informational flood quickly, whether it comes from outside or inside your skull. It also will show you how to sort that information, structure it, and ultimately discard it from your life when you no longer need it.

Hack 13. Catch Your Ideas

Good thoughts can come at any time. By recording them, you can bring them together and encourage your brain to give you more.

Interesting thoughts can come to you at any time. Perhaps you’re getting groceries, in aisle A4, and suddenly you have an idea for a program you’re writing. Or you’re driving, and a point in an argument comes to you. Or you’re in the shower, and you realize something about life.

But later, you simply forget. The very next day, you’re tasked with writing that program, or giving your side in the argument, and you ask yourself, “Now what was it I was thinking?” Perhaps you are stuck living the same day over and over again. “Didn’t I have a thought about a different way I could think and live?”

In this hack, you’re going to collect your thoughts using a catch. This is not a simple diary; this is an advanced system for collecting every thought, from everywhere in your life, and bringing them together.

WORD!

Exactly what I needed. I copped one of those longish, spiral bound, reporter notebooks, chopped it in half (wasteful, I know) and decorated the cover with some ill stickers provided in a Beautiful Decay magazine insert about the Seventh Letter Crew. (Just so that anyone spotting me jotting genius down in my little tome would at the same time know that I’m about the biz if they knew anything!)

I carried my catch with me everywhere, when I would remember to do so. Just as the book warned, there would be a point where the catch became a CRUTCH because once your brain gets used to knowing that its fantastic ideas won’t be lost as you scramble for the odd gum wrapper or balled up napkin to chronicle the golden nuggets, it will flow and flow. Sure, not all the gems will be priceless, but that’s ok because they don’t stop coming out of your dome piece - as long as you have a good, accessible, fertile place to keep them. As you can see in the picture at the top of the article, and this one below, my catch got dogged. Because of its small size I was able to tote it in the back pockets on my jeans, jacket and vest pockets, and of course any bag that I might have rocked. There were more times than one when I left the house without it and suffered as my mind spat out reminders, inspirations, haikus, design, and questions that I was ill equipped to record.

However, today I hit the last page, which has prompted me to write about it, eulogize it perhaps. Ironically, one of the ideas captured in my catch v.1 is a design for a hand made graph paper filled mini catch that will accommodate something like the Zebra telescoping pen you see in both pics. Making that book will be my winter hibernation activity - in between my fantastic snowboarding expeditions that will of course have nothing to do with falling down and seriously injuring myself.