As I am typing this, on both sides of the laptop, I have two piles of pink post-it notes on the table. On each one is a scribbled note.
There is nothing magical about the color or size of the post-it notes. Nor is it important that they are post-it notes. The only criteria they are fulfilling is that each note represents a captured idea, or prompt, or piece of information.
I happened to have a stack of post-it notes of various hues in a pile near the desk, and pink was the color that I decided I would feel least-bad about wasting. (And by this I mean, I could imagine myself using the yellow stack for more “important business purposes,” and the orange stack was too small, and the lime green stack too big, for what I wanted to do.)
And by ‘wasting,’ I mean something very specific: For the note to exist long enough for me to be able to move the idea or the information into another place, where it can be used. At that point, the note can be recycled, and I move on.
Hello. Welcome to the widest point of my workflow. Whether I am working on a song, or a grant proposal, or a blog post, or anything really, I have pretty much the same starting point. I am capturing random information and ideas.
The post-it notes are inefficient in one sense. They are ‘dumb,’ in the sense that they are static and disconnected from other workflows. If a note gets knocked aside, or falls under the desk (it happens), I likely will lose the prompt, or not have it when I am more able to deal with it. That is not efficient at all.
But in another sense, the process is very efficient. I get an idea—during a Zoom conversation, or while watching a TED talk, or just a fleeting thought—and I have the pad right there, along with a big stash of pens.
I have trained myself to grab the thought when it hits me and to move on. I don’t try to process it there and then, and I don’t really think about it after I capture it. I have the thought, I grab it, and I get back to what should be my focus at that moment.
I’m going to take you on a quick tour of the current stack, and give a synopsis of what the connective tissue is for each note:
A Patrick H. Willems quote: “The natural endpoint of everything is to become a new franchisable IP.” That is going to find its way into a manuscript I am working on about Media and Ministry, probably.
A note about one of the bands a friend recommended to me, that I should check out (Lovers, Dark Light). So I’m going to look them up on Spotify.
A reminder that Sister Simone Campbell said some good things about Walter Brueggemann on a recent Commonweal Podcast episode that I edited. Since I am working on a biography of Brueggemann, I am going to go back and transcribe that quotation, as well as try and set up an interview with Sr. Campbell for the book.
A set of 6 file numbers and timecodes from various recordings that I needed to download off my RODECaster Pro and get into the right place on my work drive. Four of them are crossed out, reminding me that I still need to go back and offload those other two.
A note about charisma: “Ignatians vs. Jesuit (Quakers, LaSallians).” I teach at a Catholic school run by Jesuits, and we have been thinking a lot about our identity. I am thinking about the various affiliated institutions I have worked with over the years, and how that might inform the question “Are we Ignatian, or are we Jesuit?” I think that will be interesting to explore.
A list of potential 2021 meeting dates for a board I serve on. I realize this note is to longer relevant (the dates have been selected), so I’m going to recycle it. (Boom, it’s gone.)
“We are the Church—not the building down the street.” Now this is interesting. I have no recollection of the context or the intent of this note. It confronts me now as a new idea. So I may bring it into my flow to develop (it sparks something, despite the disconnection), or I may decide that I don’t see any connections. But for now, it stays in the pile.
Another note: “Alternative liturgies in the time of COVID.” This one came up during a conversation with my co-hosts on The Francis Effect. It is an idea I want to think about more, so it stays in the pile for now.
I need to stress how pedestrian this is for me. A lot of my life is all about these little captured bits of information. But it is important to note:
The capturing is not the thinking. It is a gateway to thinking.
The capture is not (yet) a workflow. It is part of the raw material of a workflow.
There are multiple ways I capture like this. Nothing magical or necessary at all about pink post-it notes. They were the most low-stakes option at the moment.
That last point is worth lingering on for a moment. It does you no good to have a fancy notebook if it is so fancy you feel bad whenever you write in it. If you are stopping yourself from generating things fast, because the capture medium is too “nice,” you are using the wrong tools for the job.
I am generating ideas all the time. So are you. Most of the ideas I generate are crap. But it is vital—at the point of generation—that I am generating, not editing. I am not asking if the idea is ‘good enough,’ I am just grabbing it and moving on.
So you need the capture, at this point, to be as low-stakes as humanly possible. Have something crappy to write on, and have a lot of it nearby, at all times. Don’t worry about the fancy pens, but have a stash of pens that work and that you like enough that you don’t think about how good or how bad they are while you are writing with them.
Just get the process fast and seamless. Capture, capture, capture.
We’ll talk later about what comes next.
Courage.