Organize your inspiration

During my recent magazine purge, I found a number of interesting articles. Rather than throw out the article with the magazine, I tore out a few to keep. As you might have guessed, I’m a bit of a packrat. But, I am an organized packrat — I’ve taken those “articles of interest” and filed them for future reference.

By categorizing the articles I’ve collected over the years, I can pull them out easily when I’m looking for ideas. They are within reach — in a desktop file caddy on top of my filing cabinet — so I don’t have to go far to find them.

If I am looking for inspiration on a particular topic, I can leaf through a file folder and see if anything stirs an idea. To keep it simple, the files are organized into categories that reflect my main areas of interest:

• Marketing and branding
• Business and innovation
• Sports and fitness

I also keep my “Inspiration Journals” close by so that I can look up “that comment I heard on the radio the other day” or remind myself of a contact that someone suggested to me. Keeping things simple and being organized means that you access the information you need without too much trouble — important for a packrat like me to put all the “stuff” to use.

Innovation inspiration

I must admit I am a bit of a magazine junkie. Over the past few months, I have build up quite a stack, thanks in part to dozen freebies I picked at the Winter Outdoor Retailer show (which I greatly appreciate!). Most of those were outdoor and travel related, but I have also acquired a collection of business magazines. In an effort to reduce the pile, I have been reading some of the older issues and discovered a number of interesting and/or inspiring articles.

One article I enjoyed was from the December-January 2007 issue of Profit magazine. The main article, called “Get Lucky” by Susanne Ruder, was a discussion of the book The Luck Factor: The Four Essential Principles by Richard Wiseman. [Please note, when I posted this entry, I had difficulty accessing the article. You can also try the Profit home page.]

The book was based a 10-year study, called “The Luck Project”, which focused on the characteristics and behaviors that made people “lucky”. The article expanded on the four principles Wiseman identified:

• Maximize your “chance opportunities” — lucky people tend to be extroverts who are good at meeting people, open to new experiences and like unpredictability.
• Listen to hunches — your first instincts are usually correct; they are based on what you’ve learned over time even if you are not completely aware of your knowledge.
• Expect good fortune — lucky people are optimists who persist in the face of failure.
• Turn bad luck into good — as your mother said, “look on the bright side”.

I also found a sidebar to the article, called “Innovation Calisthenics: Five exercises to tone your creative muscles”, provided inspiration for trying to see things in a new light. I have included the content here verbatim:

1. Get out of your rut. Move your watch to the other wrist. Leave your keys in a new place. Take a different route home. Force yourself out of one habit a week, and you’ll start thinking in new directions.
2. Record it before you forget it. Don’t leave home without a notepad, tape recorder or other means to record ideas as they occur. Then force yourself to add 10 related ideas.
3. Immerse yourself in fresh viewpoints. Explore books, magazines, newspapers and websites that are unrelated to your business or personal interests. Travel somewhere you wouldn’t normally go. Surround yourself with people from diverse fields whose new-to-you perspectives will expose you to opportunities.
4. Reimagine the old. Encourage lateral thinking by taking an everyday items such as a paper clip or a rubber band and brainstorming 25 alternative uses for it.
5. Take up a brain sport. Exercise pumps your brain with glucose, which increases oxygen delivery and nerve connections. Keep your mind sharp by participating in a strategic sport, such as football, hockey or soccer. And loosen up your imagination with a rhythmic activity, such as running, walking or swimming.

My favorite point is #2. I now carry a notebook with me at all times (and most of the time I have a pen with me as well). I use it to write down anything bright idea that pops into my head and I’ve used Post-It tabs to divide it into sections, so I can categorize my random thoughts slightly.

The notebook has been useful to record smart things I hear on the radio that I want to learn more about, dumb things that I want to comment on, business opportunities I think about, etc. I have it with me any time I meet with someone, so I can take notes. I even added a small pocket for business cards and a few bucks so it is all I need for a quick coffee.

The key is to be ready for inspiration because it can happen any time.