The older I become and experience I gain, the more interesting ideas I find and (sometimes) generate. Some are silly, some (I think) are quite insightful, and other need time to marinate in the juices of other ideas and experience to even make sense.
Some ideas are immediately applicable, while others remain theoretical. Some never make it past mindful amusement, while others change personal and professional practice in meaningful and lasting ways. But even the most ethereal add value by constantly shifting the filter mechanisms through which new ideas and experiences are sorted.
I’m not exceptional in any way in this regard – pretty much everyone has ideas all the time that amuse, fascinate, and distract. I have created my own system that has been working (for me) for keeping and weighing ideas over the last several years, and it folds in nicely with the more general connectivist mindset that resonate with me. At the heart of connectivism is the idea of relativity: Ideas, knowledge, experience and actions are not absolute, but are constantly measured against past and freshly-acquired content/context. That is, we are in a constant state of recalibrating and re-measuring what we know, what we do, and what we think.
I am not a good self-organizer, and never have been. Attention to detail is not my strong suit. But, I’ve learned how to incorporate a systematic process – a PKM practice, I suppose – that works for me. Being naturally disorganized and messy, it would be a stretch to recommend what works for me to
My Scoop.IT page is one place to collect and reflect on ideas.
anyone else.
I believe the key, though, is to have a system – any system that works – and practice it faithfully. What’s more, when we capture those ideas digitally, via Evernonote file, audio “notes-to-self”, curated boards (like Pinterest or Scoop.It), Twitter favs and retweets, and so on, it becomes easy to tag, retrieve and connect. I shuffle ideas into connections via visual mind maps, with arrows, dotted lines and color codes. About once a month I do a formal iteration break, with the archives becoming a record of my idea evolution.
One other great benefit of that process is it is easily shared, too. As we are discovering, the Work Out Loud (and their corollaries Think Out Loud and Learn Out Loud) practice is a centerpiece of both personal and organizational growth.
Whatever your practice is or becomes, it is learned and constantly refined. Don’t assume that others have the skills to do this on their own. I learned from others, and I try to share with others the purpose and benefits of thinking and working in this way.
Sense-making In The Learning Age is an ongoing process, and I welcome hearing from you about how you make it work.
In the Learning Age 