Today I’d just chime in to discuss a personal challenge I’ve been struggling with, which is how to come up with ideas for this newsletter, or any creative work. I found that the process is not often linear, it’s not like you sit down and figure out what to write about. It’s more like you read and consume lots of things, and then suddenly and unexpectedly you find you probably have some good insights about something.
Since I consume lots of content in different formats, and there’s probably lots of people like me, the challenge is becoming less about what to write about but rather how to manage all these inputs. If writing output is directly related to things I read or learn, then theoretically I should have lots of content and things to share. Practically though, it’s not often the case.
I always try to carry around a small notebook and a pen. Where I write anything I feel compelled to write down or maybe remember in a few months or even a few years time. I often find each one of those notebooks lasts 2-3 months before I switch to a new one. So each one ends up being a small collection of thoughts and ideas I had during that two to three month period.
- (after sometime the problem becomes, what to pick from the existing pool of ideas I already have rather than what ideas to start having. which should generally be the correct way to approach this)
Last week I wrote an issue of this newsletter, but then I didn’t like it, so I didn’t send it. And then I thought of writing another one. I was searching for ideas. Only 10 minutes skimming my current notebook (started December) I had more than a handful. When I picked one topic (this post) I skimmed it again but with a sharper filter: ideas that might be related to the topic I chose. Once again, I found several relevant ideas, which helped put together this post in under an hour.
The process I described above is the typical process of how a brain works when you create something. Remember that creativity is not ‘coming up with new ideas’, but mixing existing ones in novel ways. It’s not like you sit down and think so hard about something to write. Actually, if this were the case, no one would be able to write anything. Just the heavy lifting required to pull everything from scratch onto a blank page would be enough to prevent anyone from ever starting.
However, a physical notebook represents just one way to capture input – What about the 100 webpages or short videos or insights I have read or watched or consumed since December? How many ideas do you think I could’ve come up with if I also have a detailed log of all these things just like I have of handwritten notes? If I was able to skim a library of things that I have captured in my notebook since December, what about the things that I wasn’t able to capture?
- If anything, this puts emphasis on the importance of writing down / saving things we feel inspired by, or maybe any fleeting thoughts, as they happen, because we don’t know when exactly they might be useful
The value of this library for ‘creative work’ is infinite. Because if I could sit down to look at my library and write this post in under an hour, there probably is an infinite number of ideas I could turn into creative work just by doing a small mix -or more- of some previous inputs.
<photo>
If you read this and think “that’s only relevant because you write,” it’s actually safe to say that this kind of library is an essential prerequisite for any line of creative work. The thing about building such library is that it doesn’t really matter what your output looks like. By capturing and storing ideas you come across, you make it possible for your future self to use that in whatever way they like, which could be a blogpost, a youtube video, a tweet, an email, a podcast, a presentation – the potential is infinite.
- Consume → Mix → Create visual
- instead of a digital one, add visual from my notebook + date?
If I were to mark each paragraph or idea in this post with its capture date, you'd be surprised to see how scattered these dates are. The ideas were originally captured at very different times. Although they neatly connect, when they first occurred could be very disconnected. it almost doesn’t seem to make any sense. You’d find it surprising how we connect the dots over time.
<visual: disconnected days, connected ideas>
The challenge, then, is this: How can we build a knowledge library from all the content we consume online – even when we don't know how we'll use it yet?
Fundamentally, there isn’t one definite answer. Instead, it's best to think of the solution as a set of practices. It’s also important to note that what works for me doesn’t necessarily work for you, and that’s why it takes some trial and error. But there are some things that lots of people have found to largely help their creative workflows. I say ‘practices’ because the tools are not as important as the practices. Tools are just ways to help easily incorporate the practice into your daily life.
Below are some of the practices that I’ve found to work well for me, listed in order of importance:
- Highlighting the web
Highlight capture tools enable saving text excerpts from any place on the internet. A highlight could be text from an essay, a book, a tweet, an academic pdf, a blogpost, etc. Some tools for highlighting are Readwise, Matter, and Raindrop.
- Handwritten notes
<image>
Carrying a physical notebook allows for quick capture of ideas and thoughts throughout the day – no batteries or wifi required. The tactile nature of writing by hand also helps with memory retention and creative mixing. Also, searching a handwritten notebook is incredibly easy, because of ‘visual memory’.
- Meeting notes
An online meeting is an example of an event that creates a dense medium for ideas per minute compared to other events. Ideas per minute is not a unit, I just made that up for comparison. The collision that happens between the thoughts of everyone on the call often results in you not being able to process everything until after the call. That’s why meeting notes come in handy if you want to auto-capture and revisit those insights later.
Many software tools are now making it easier to transcribe meetings, take notes on your behalf, and turn them into summaries, insights, and even action items. One example I like is limitless.ai.
- Write from conversation
<screenshot: iphone keyboard mic>
You’d be surprised to know how easy it is to create written content by just speaking it. Speaking requires much less effort than writing. For this reason, you can use the speech-to-text feature available in every phone keyboard today. This enables you to draft an email, a script, a social post, or a marketing copy while you’re walking or driving or at the gym.
- Take screenshots
<screenshot: photos search, 2 portrait pics>
This could be one of the least favorite ways of capture, but the Photos app on iOS now enables searching text in images. This means that you can take screenshots of anything you’d want to capture or visit later, since you know you can search by certain keywords and it’d pop up.
- Regular review sessions (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly)
Reviewing things you capture is a good step to maintain the integrity of the system, i.e, maximize its utility for your future self to spin out quality stuff. Doesn’t matter how often you review; pick whatever works.
- Keep it simple - don't overcomplicate your system
It’s important to know that starting out, the best system is the one that enables the least friction. Using too many tools and doing too many steps can lead to diminishing returns. It’s reported that creators and professionals spend nearly one-third of their workweek on storing and retrieving knowledge.
- this ‘connecting dots’ behavior is massive not only for creative writing, but also for doing research and learning stuff – we don’t learn topics or have thoughts in separate sandboxes. the brain doesn’t store knowledge in folders, it stores it as a series of connections between things. so it’s normal for ‘what you know about <example>’ to look like this:
- <one bit of knowledge> <date>
- <one bit of knowledge> <date>
- <one bit of knowledge> <date>
- as opposed to this:
- <one bit> <folder>
- <one bit> <folder>
- (if you desperately want to categorize the things you know, you’d have a structure like this)
- idea <> folder
- same idea <> another folder
- same idea <> third folder
- (when was the last time you ….)
- (see how ideas are very random, and don’t follow any ‘structure’? the problem of current tools we use to save and write down ideas is that it forces us to include it ‘somewhere’ – in a folder, or a category, or a tag – it’s almost useless, and very dumb.)
- conaw
- h/w
- old capture post
- check sari azout related
- KM pipeline visual (24nov23)
- consume–capture–organize–create–share
- write down added context? ‘location’, ‘calendar event’, …?
- for example, if i read a book when i’m traveling – i’d make sure to write down a note of where i was because it massively helps with rebuilding that context later – it might seem like physical location and thoughts we have are separated but they’re intrinisically connected, possible way more than we might think
- think of why people generally recommend/love travel, and how they associate it with mind openness / expanded horizons / expanded worldviews and <insert sth good>
- think of why is it the case that some places you used to visit during your childhood trigger memories/emotion when you visit them today
- something i see online quite a lot → tech savvy people who travel are more lenient to maintain a travel log and photo portfolio of their travels online → the reason i think this is the case is because if they don’t do this, it’s -almost- as if they have never travelled without something tangible to show for it
- Lots of our memories are bound by where we are. So just by remembering/revisiting a location, you could remember lots of other things like activities, projects, thoughts, etc.
- can we include a quick form into hss waitlist into the product section???
- ‘you connect the dots over time’ – ‘moreover, your understanding develops over time’
- ‘now since our brains naturally store information as interconnected networks, not as isolated pieces in separate containers, it’s clear that’
- note about search?
- check hss section in Capture
- Focus on creativity over productivity
- Build a system that brings joy and inspiration rather than anxiety
- Create an environment that nurtures serendipitous discovery
- Use two modes of collection:
- Passive/Fishing: Save content that resonates without immediate purpose
- Active/Hunting: Intentionally collect for specific projects
- Avoid "fear tagging" and rigid hierarchical systems
- Organize by:
- Questions (e.g., "what is art?")
- Projects (both current and aspirational)
- Allow items to exist in multiple contexts
- Review collections regularly for inspiration
- Use collected material as raw ingredients for recipe creation
- Allow ideas to marinate and connections to form naturally
- Draw from those collections when starting new projects
- Use as inspiration rather than direct copying
- Move from curation to creation organically
- Use collected material as building blocks for new ideas
- Treat writing as assembly of curated thoughts
- Allow time for synthesis and personal interpretation
- Let patterns emerge naturally rather than forcing connections
- Focus on the content rather than the organization system
- Instead of using AI for generating new content → use AI to extract deep relationships between ideas
- i assure you the output of this step is going to be of much more quality than just ‘tell AI to write stuff’ → think of this, in a few years time the mainstream problem is going to be about the reduction of genuine voices than ability to generate content <rephrase>