When new ideas come to you, where do they go next?
I address that question in one of the new lessons that I developed for the updated Verbal to Visual curriculum. That lesson is called The Capture Habit, and it’s about the practice of always having a way to get your thoughts out of your head and onto something you can reference later.
As I was putting that lesson together, two conversations kept coming back to me, and I think they perfectly illustrate why this habit is so powerful.
The first was with Dave Gray during one of our recent book club sessions within the Verbal to Visual community. Dave was sharing his approach to always having some sort of capture tool within reach. He carries a small pocket notebook in his back pocket, sometimes also a slightly bigger one in his front pocket, and when he’s at home, he’s got his go-to journal where he captures his own thoughts and ideas from the various books he’s reading, and keeps those journals collected on his shelf in chronological order.
What stuck with me was when he said, “Having a notebook is my security blanket.”
That phrase captures something essential about the capture habit. It’s not just about having paper and pen available. It’s about having that reliable external thinking partner you can turn to whenever you need to work through an idea, process an experience, or simply get something out of your head so you don’t lose it.
The second story comes from a video I watched recently where Adam Savage talks about how he organizes his thoughts in physical notebooks. He said, “A sketchbook that you want to flip through is going to be a much more useful sketchbook to you. Those drawings, those things are going to stay top of mind.”
He went on to explain how going back to refine his drawings – making them brighter, clearer, more readable – keeps him creatively energized. For him, those notebooks help him solve the mechanical problems involved in his physical builds. But in addition to that, “The quality of the drawing makes me happy to go look at it.”
Here’s what I appreciate about those two approaches: they show us the dual function that makes the capture habit so valuable.
Your notebook serves as a real-time thinking tool. Like Dave’s security blanket, it’s there when you need to capture an idea in the moment, work through a problem, or externalize what’s bouncing around in your head. It’s responsive and immediate, always ready to help you think on paper.
But it also becomes a time-shifted creative partner. Like Adam’s sketchbooks, it’s something you return to with fresh eyes, building on ideas that have had time to percolate. When you flip back through pages weeks or months later, you’re seeing your own thoughts from a new perspective, often discovering connections or possibilities you missed the first time around.
Both Dave and Adam have figured out that the same captured idea can serve both functions. First, it helps you think through something right now. Later, it becomes a creative partner that you get to have a conversation with.
The key is making your capture practice something you actually want to engage with. Dave’s multiple notebooks ensure he’s never without his thinking tool. Adam’s focus on visual quality ensures his notebooks become places he’s drawn back to.
Your capture habit will probably look different from both of theirs, and that’s exactly as it should be. The goal isn’t to copy their specific systems, but to develop your own reliable way of getting ideas out of your head and onto the page, then making those captured thoughts worth revisiting.
If you’re still figuring out what tools might work best for your own capture habit – whether you’re drawn to small pocket notebooks, larger journals, or digital alternatives – I dive deep into your options and share techniques within the Verbal to Visual curriculum.
Once you find the right tools for you, the real magic happens: your notebook stops being just a place to store ideas and becomes an active partner in your thinking.
Cheers,
-Doug