Creative Habit: Capture Ideas in a Big Text File
DOUG TOFT
CREATING A COMMONPLACE BOOK
Creative people are not necessarily smarter than the rest of us. All of us get great ideas. However, creative people excel at capturing those ideas so they’re not forgotten.
In her wonderful book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life , choreographer Twyla Tharp states that creativity is fueled by rituals—intentional, repeated behaviors. Habits , in other words.
One of her habits is to start a creative project by filling a box with background materials—books, handwritten notes, relevant clippings from magazines, CDs, and anything else that looks useful. She fills at least one box for each project.
The more geeky types among us use software such as Evernote —rather than boxes—to gather capture ideas.
My philosophy is to keep it simple. I just use a Big Text File (BTF).
Ideas for articles, blog posts, and books go in the BTF.
Lists of books I want to read go in the BTF.
Names, addresses, phone numbers, project lists, to-do items, menus, quotations, websites to check, and anything else that occurs to me on the run—all get dumped in the same place.
The BTF.
Note that BTF is singular, not plural. I only have one. When I want to find something that I noted earlier, I always go to the same place—the BTF.
Tracking your ideas in one BTF means:
Eliminating the need for new software. You’re already using software to write, right? Use it for your BTF.
Eliminating the extra expense for new software (flows from benefit #1).
Eliminating the leaning curve for new software (also flows from benefit #1).
Using the most platform-independent digital format (text).
Using the easiest-to-search digital format (text).
Using the least memory-intensive digital format (text).
Plus, you never have to edit this file. If you want to find a specific piece of information, just use the “find” command in your word processor or text editor. Search your BTF with keywords, just like you search the Internet.
In short, you never have to “get organized.” With a BTF and the “find” command, you are organized.
If you want slightly more structure, you can begin each note with a category tag (like the category tags in right-hand column on this page). Then you can alphabetize your BTF by tags.
In any case, plain text is sexy.
Image by Robbert van der Steeg, Flickr Creative Commons
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Doug Toft says: 08/28/2011 at 4:08 pm Mike: Thanks for reminding of Matt Cornell’s post. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that. There’s a Mac utility called Console that allows you to access .log files. I don’t know how to use it to create new files, however. Interesting: Giles Turnbull, who originally inspired the use of the “big ass text file,” abandoned it: http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2005/11/the_end_of_one_big_text_file.html Like Like
Mike: Thanks for reminding of Matt Cornell’s post. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that.
There’s a Mac utility called Console that allows you to access .log files. I don’t know how to use it to create new files, however.
Interesting: Giles Turnbull, who originally inspired the use of the “big ass text file,” abandoned it: http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2005/11/the_end_of_one_big_text_file.html
Like Like
Mike Brown says: 08/27/2011 at 9:26 pm Matt Cornell has used a single text file for years and blogged about it at http://www.matthewcornell.org/blog/2005/8/21/my-big-arse-text-file-a-poor-mans-wikiblogpim.html . He uses WikiWord formatting for his keywords. For those still in the paper world, there’s also the idea of a single notebook or ‘superbook’ that serves the same purpose. One thing I always liked about Windows Notepad was that, in creating a new text file, put “.LOG” in the first line to turn it into an automatic log file. Opening the file zooms you to the bottom of the file with the date and time entered. For some reason, I’ve not found any other Mac text editor that had such a simple way to do such a simple thing. (One reason I like the date/time stamp is that I think chronological sorting seems to be the most durable of all sort options for ideas and jottings.) Like Like
Matt Cornell has used a single text file for years and blogged about it at http://www.matthewcornell.org/blog/2005/8/21/my-big-arse-text-file-a-poor-mans-wikiblogpim.html . He uses WikiWord formatting for his keywords. For those still in the paper world, there’s also the idea of a single notebook or ‘superbook’ that serves the same purpose.
One thing I always liked about Windows Notepad was that, in creating a new text file, put “.LOG” in the first line to turn it into an automatic log file. Opening the file zooms you to the bottom of the file with the date and time entered. For some reason, I’ve not found any other Mac text editor that had such a simple way to do such a simple thing. (One reason I like the date/time stamp is that I think chronological sorting seems to be the most durable of all sort options for ideas and jottings.)
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