Writing It Down

If you don’t write things down, you’ll forget them.

We all know this. We’ve been told this by our parents. We have an idea or we suggest some improvement, and someone says, “You’d better write that down or you’ll forget it.”

But most people don’t do it. They nod, and laugh, and they go on to another topic of conversation. And the idea dissipates. Gone.

Why don’t people write down their ideas? Why don’t we record all our neat ideas? Why don’t we dump them in a box and sort through them occasionally, and try out a few of them?

(I certainly do; I even keep index cards and a pencil in my left-hand pants pocket at all times, just in case an idea comes to me. Once I fill up a card, I drop it into my inbox for later processing. I mean, why not?)