Don’t Keep Your Thoughts in Your Head
By: Carlson Ng
Tags: Mental Health, Creativity, Productivity, Thinking, Tips And Tricks

They disappear if you do

Photo by Carolina Heza on Unsplash

According to a recent study, a person typically has around 6,200 thoughts per day. If you are awake for 16 hours (you probably shouldn’t be awake for more than that), that is 388 per hour, 6 per minute, or a new thought every 10 seconds. That is quite a lot of thoughts if you ask me. Out of all those thoughts that make their appearance in your mind, whether as a cameo or as a protagonist taking up center stage, how many of them do you actually remember?

Going back with the film reference, have you seen a film so good that you wished you could forget the film completely so that you could watch the film as if it were your first time again? I definitely have. These films could only leave such an emotional impact on you if one condition was met: you remember the film. Yet, out of all the thoughts that made an appearance in your head, in which some of them could have been billion-dollar business ideas, or Grammy-potential lyrics, or Hollywood-worthy screenplays, how many do you actually remember? How many thoughts do you actually allow to make an impact in your life?

“If you have one chance, one opportunity, would you capture it? Or would you let it slip” — Eminem

Capture your thoughts

Your thoughts do not materialize unless it is turned into something tangible, like words you could read or audio you could listen to. Do you want to fully utilize the power of your mind? For spontaneous thoughts and ideas, here’s what you should do.

Write them down

Write down all the interesting, or useful thoughts that come to your head would help you remember your thoughts. You could keep a digital notebook with any note-taking app on your phone, or you could keep an analog Commonplace Notebook (the fancy name for a notebook you keep to write down anything). Whatever method you prefer, just make sure you have a very accessible and convenient way of jotting down anything that comes to your mind quickly.

Voice record them

Besides writing down notes, you could also choose to record a voice memo of what is in your head. It is even faster to voice record what is in your head because sometimes your thoughts might be kind of all over the place without any concrete structure that holds everything together so a lot of pieces of the thought might not make sense at first. That would pose a problem during writing since it is the norm to write with structure. With voice, you can say whatever you want and come back to the voice memos later to make sense of them.

Make Time to Think

We are not spending enough time doing nothing. We are always occupied with something. The first thing we do after we wake up is checking our social media accounts or emails. During breaks from hectic work, we turn straight away to entertainment options such as random Youtube videos, Netflix shows, or games. We are constantly occupied.

We always feel the need to be occupied or we would otherwise be ‘wasting our time’ so it seems. However, that is far from the truth. We have to give our brains time to relax. When your mind is free and not pre-occupied, that is when we are the most innovative and creative. Have you ever felt like your best ideas came from times when you were doing something not demanding of your mind such as showering? Shower thoughts, anyone? Coincidence? I think not.

If you feel like you haven’t had many thoughts at all, you might be one of those people I was talking about. Make some time doing nothing each day to think about things that matter to you. Once you have your thoughts, write them down, or voice record them.

Impact happens when things are done. However, impactful things do not happen if they were never conceptualized in the first place. The thought occurs before the act.

Conclusion

When you think of something interesting, whatever you do, do not leave it untapped in your head. Make sure you track down every one of them and record them in your own way.