3 Ways to Remove Clutter and Create Innovative Ideas
Staying organized is for closets and desktops, right? When we hear about organizing things, we may think of the Container Store or productivity applications. Those keep us organized in different ways. Keeping track of everything we have in our minds can be critically important too. If we do not have a good way to capture, process, and develop ideas, our innovation can be stifled.
It always seems so freeing to organizing a closet, basement, garage, or even our desk when the clutter reaches an intolerable level. Suddenly we can see things that were hidden before, and new ideas begin to flow. Our brains work the same way. When we can organize the information flowing through our heads and clean out old, non-useful items, we make room for new possibilities. Here are three ideas for helping you keep your thoughts and ideas organized, so you are always making space for new ideas to flow.
Have an inbox for thoughts
Ensure you have a way, if not a couple of ways, to quickly write down or dictate your thoughts and ideas as they come to you. Your phone can be extremely useful in this regard. The built-in voice memos appis an excellent way to quickly capture voice notes that you can refer back to later to build out the idea or transfer somewhere else.
Many different writing and notes applications are also great to use for quick entry note capture. You can even summon the Apple Notes app quickly without logging into your phone to capture a quick note. A combination of both voice and writing is helpful and is a good use for Siri, Google, or Alexa.
The ultimate goal is to ensure you have a place that you can capture all of your ideas and corral them into a place where you can regularly review and manage them.
Build a weekly routine of reviewing your ideas
Having a collection of ideas or thoughts, but no way to process them is akin to throwing stuff in the closet and ‘coming back to it later.’ You need a process for how you work through all of those ideas. Set aside time each week as part of your weekly planning and review session to look at all of the ideas you captured throughout the week.
It is not enough to look at them, though. You need to do something with them. Some you may have already addressed earlier in the week. Others you can look at and know they seemed reasonable at the moment, but after processing it for some time, you know it will not be useful later. Discard those to make room for new items. This is a critical step. You must be brutally honest with yourself to flush out the really good ideas from those that will never materialize into anything useful.
Look at your ideas in different ways
Take the good ideas you have captured and work through them. I find it useful to take the initial idea and move it to another, more visual platform. If it is a voice memo - I will bring it into something that is written or typed. I also like to take ideas and write them on a whiteboard and begin to add further ideas to build it out.
I frequently use mind maps or outlines to do the same thing. It allows me to take the core idea and brainstorm easily to build out all elements of the idea. Plus, I get the added benefit of seeing it and not just reading it. Adding pictures or simple drawings is another way to both enhance the idea as well as spur on additional ideas for how the idea may eventually come to life.
From this point, you can add your idea to a more permanent storage area - file folders, pictures in your photo library, or into a PowerPoint presentation to share with others. Having this workflow defined will ensure that you have a place you know your idea will be processed and put into action.
Innovation requires space. And not just physical space, but space in your brain for these new ideas to formulate and be captured. Defining a step by step way for you to recognize the ideas, capture them, review them, and ultimately development and implement them is important. It can help ensure that you are continually looking for new ideas without being bogged down with old information or stuff preventing the necessary space to be available for them to develop further. If you just throw everything in the closet, eventually you can’t close the door, and there is no space for anything new. Don’t let that happen to your newest and best thoughts and ideas.
What do you do to process the ideas you have and always make space for the next great thought?
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Photo by Dragos Gontariu on Unsplash