Keep a ‘Spark File’ to Brainstorm With Past Versions of Yourself
A strategy for keeping your fleeting thoughts alive indefinitely
It happens to me all the time. I’ll be wiping down the kitchen counter or doing something equally mundane when I’ll get a flicker of an idea: a story to write or the premise of a book project perhaps. But then, two and half seconds later, before my mind can make the next connection, I’ll get a text from my sister or remember that I have to call the electrician or realize that I don’t know who plays the grandmother in that show I watched last night and that I must Google it right this instant. And just like that, the tiny thought falls into the dark pit where all the embers of Possibly Good Ideas turn to ash.
This is why I started taking a pen and small notebook with me everywhere — physically writing something down helps us to retain information. But the ideas are still just ideas, now sitting in filled-up notebooks on my desk.
Author Steven Johnson, who wrote the book Where Good Ideas Come From, shares his strategy for keeping fleeting, potentially useful thoughts alive — even the ones that are years old. He maintains what he calls a “Spark File” — “a chronological list of semi-random ideas” that he captures in a Google doc. But he doesn’t let the list stay idle. Instead, he…
