Getting Things Done

PART ONE
of something unique and positive about it that hadn't occurred to
them before. "Wouldn't it be great if. . ." is not a bad way to start
thinking about a situation, at least for long enough to have the
option of getting an answer.
The best way to get
a good idea is to
get lots of ideas.
—
Linus Pauling
Your mind wants to
fill in the blanks
between here and
there, but in
somewhat random
order.
Brainstorming
Once you know what you want to have happen, 
and
why, 
the "how" mechanism is brought into play.
When you identify with some picture in your mind
that is different from your current reality, you auto-
matically start filling in the gaps, or brainstorming.
Ideas begin to pop into your head in somewhat ran-
dom order—little ones, big ones, not-so-good ones,
good ones. This process usually goes on internally for
most people about most things, and that's often suf-
ficient. For example, you think about what you want
to say to your boss as you're walking down the hall to
speak to her. But there are many other instances
when writing things down, or capturing them in
some external way, can give a tremendous boost to
productive output and thinking.
70
Capturing Your Ideas
Over the last few decades, a number of graphics-oriented brain-
storming techniques have been introduced to help develop cre-
ative thinking about projects and topics. They've been called
things like mind-mapping, clustering, patterning, webbing, and
fish-boning. Although the authors of these various processes may
portray them as being different from one another, for most of us
end-users the basic premise remains the same: give yourself per-
mission to capture and express 
any 
idea, and then later on figure
out how it fits in and what to do with it. If nothing else (and there
is plenty of "else"), this practice adds to your efficiency—when
you have the idea, you grab it, which means you won't have to go
"have the idea" again.

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