== Notes to self ==
Not gold alone brought us hither

Ideas

Ideas are what lead to new things. The two different stages in this process of creating something new are – the idea and the implementation. So first, there needs to be an idea – that moment of inspiration when a thought is born which promises to be a seed to doing or creating something new or different, possibly even useful (lucky you if it is useful because most ideas are useless). The second stage is implementation, where the idea generator or somebody else takes that idea and converts that into something useful.

Most ideas die without seeing any effort dedicated to preserving or implementing them. My guess is that ideas die mostly because they are never captured. An idea surfaces as a spark in someones head only to vanish in the next moment because that person got busy with something else.

One common practice successful people say they use to take ideas to implementation is by capturing the idea in the form of a note before they forget the details. They usually do this by always carrying with them a notebook where they can jot down the idea as soon as it occurs to them. Its important to do that right away because in that moment of inspiration, you can get into as much detail as you want about an idea and start taking notes before you forget or lose interest. Its like listening to your brain develop the idea while you quickly take notes before the brain decides to shift its attention to something else. Scott Adams says that you know you have a good idea when you feel a physical sensation in your belly when the idea strikes you. When that happens, grab your notebook and a pencil, and write it down.

The point is, make a note of good ideas and with as much detail as possible. Doing so will greatly improve the chances of that idea being implemented.