How I Stopped Losing Good Ideas (and Started Actually Using Them)

You ever get hit with a perfect idea at the worst possible time?

Like a blog post outline shows up fully formed while you're halfway through a shower, or a LinkedIn post that would really catch but you're headed to the office.

Yeah, yeah, me too.

I used to lose more good ideas than I care to admit. They’d show up uninvited — on a walk, mid-ruck, or while I was pretending to meditate — and then vanish just as fast. And because I didn’t have a system, I’d think “Oh, I’ll remember that one” and then... never did.

Here’s the hard truth: the more creative you are, the more likely it is you’re losing your best ideas.

So let’s fix that.

Part 1: Your Brain is Not a Filing Cabinet (Capture Everything)

Real-life example: I was on a ruck listening to a podcast — one of those ones where the guest actually says something worth hearing — and BAM, he perfectly phrased a concept I’d been trying to articulate for weeks. I outlined a full podcast episode in my head.

You know what I didn’t do? Capture it.

You know what happened? I forgot about it by the next time I was behind the mic.

Lesson learned: Your brain is great at generating ideas. It’s terrible at storing them. It’s like using a pasta strainer to carry soup. Don’t do that.

What to do instead: Always have a capture tool. For me, that’s a combo of:

• Voice notes (quick hits while driving or walking)
• Notion (because it syncs across everything and I can tag stuff fast)
• A little notebook I sometimes use

It doesn’t matter what you use — just that it’s frictionless. The more resistance, the more likely that idea will float off into the void.

Quick test: Try capturing every idea you have for the next 24 hours. No judgment, no editing. Just catch ‘em. You'll be shocked how much good stuff was slipping through the cracks.

Part 2: Turning the Junk Drawer into a Filing System

Now you’ve got 47 half-sentences, 9 cryptic voice notes, and one entry that just says “Jason Bourne but with spreadsheets.” Congrats — you’ve successfully brain-dumped.

But now what?

Early on, I’d do brain dumps and then never touch them again. They’d just live everywhere, buried with other abandoned good intentions. What I needed wasn’t more ideas. I needed a way to make them usable.

Here’s what works for me:

• Once a week, I do a 15-minute idea audit.
• I tag each note, text to myself, or voice memo, with a general theme — “AI,” “Content,” “Mindset,” “Automation,” etc.
• I drop them into a Notion board that’s barely structured, just enough to be searchable.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s speed. If it takes more than 30 seconds to organize, I’m not doing it.

Reminder: Organization isn’t for the sake of neatness — it’s for your future self who’s trying to write a LinkedIn post and needs that “Jason Bourne with spreadsheets” idea.

Try this: Go back through what you captured over the past day. Create 3–5 categories. Toss everything in. Don’t overthink it.

Part 3: The Magic of the Half-Built Thing

Once you’ve got ideas and some loose structure, the real fun begins, turning that raw material into content.

This used to trip me up. I thought every blog post had to be written start to finish in one go. If I weren’t feeling “inspired,” I wouldn’t even try. Which meant I started 10x more than I ever finished.

Then I discovered the miracle of outlining.

Now I just do this:

• Write a rough headline or idea
• Add a hook, a few bullets for what I want to say
• Drop in any punchlines or phrases I don’t want to forget
• Add a “So what?” takeaway at the end

That’s it. Suddenly, I’m not writing a blog post, I’m just filling in a template I already built for myself.

Try this: Take one of your categorized ideas and outline it. Don’t worry about grammar or flow. Just get a shape. You can always polish later — the goal is momentum. Pro-tip - this is a great use case for ChatGPT.

The Full System (Steal This Workflow)

If you want to do something with your ideas instead of just collecting them like Pokémon cards, here's the system in a nutshell:

1. Capture relentlessly – Voice notes, notes apps, back of napkins, whatever. Don’t rely on memory.
2. Review weekly – Spend 15 minutes categorizing and tagging what you’ve captured.
3. Outline first – Get the bones down first. Everything gets 10x easier.
4. Draft, then refine – You don’t need to be perfect. You need to be done. Voice and polish come later.
5. Publish and repurpose – Turn one idea into a blog, a LinkedIn post, a tweet thread, even a video.

Final Word (And a Small Nudge)

If you’re constantly coming up with great ideas but rarely acting on them, you don’t need more creativity. You need a system.

Build a net to catch your thoughts. Build a shelf to organize them. Then build something great with what you’ve got.

And if you happen to come up with a brilliant idea while reading this, don’t make the classic mistake.

Write. It. Down.

— Nate