So I was coming into the kitchen after walking Leica and Ollie when I saw the ripe papayas I bought yesterday in Bogor. Francy would prepare any fruit for me but not papayas. She cannot stand the smell because in her words, “Those are bird food.” 🙂

I was peeling away these huge fruits when ideas started to form in my head. Blogpost subjects, business ideas, preweddding themes, new ventures. Lines and lines of ideas keep coming up, forming short paragraphs of different subjects, while my hands are busy with the knife.

When I finally finished, turning the two huge dirty fruits into these neat red cubes in a container, I probably have 10 new blogpost subjects (along with their key paragraphs), 5 new strategic ideas for Edward Suhadi Productions, 5 Prewedding themes, 10 new things I should try for my life, and maybe two or three new business ventures. Not bad for some bird food, eh?

Ideas are elusive. They’re a bit like cockroaches: you never seem to find one when you look for them. You could sit and ponder and browse the internets until you forget you have a wife and two kids, but you still can not come up with any good ones. By ‘good’ I mean the truly original, foolproof, and remarkable kind of ideas.

But, again, like cockroaches, ideas sneak up on you when you least expected. When you’re in the kitchen, bam! There it is. When you’re showering, bam! Another one. And everyone here must’ve that experience of seeing one while you are, sorry, pooping. I am sure a lot of you here ever had those amazing ideas when you were showering, correct?

So here’s what I propose: Do simple, mundane, low focus kinda thing to help you get fresh new ideas. Not things like fixing your bike, gardening, or sports that need concentration. Definetely not watching TV, because you maybe just sit there, but TV suck away all your brain power and senses, leaving nothing to spare. Try instead things like washing your car, taking your dogs for a walk, running, ironing your laundry, and of course, peeling fruits. Or you could just shower a lot.

Now, this is the most important thing: When you get these ideas, you need to ‘catch’ them. Hundreds of ideas flow like river to a common man, but they just hop from one branch to another, like a bird chirping away in a big tree. You need to freeze them on paper, on a voice recorder, or on your phone.

That’s why I always write down stuff on my phone. Any application will do, but try the ones with very small set up, apps that let you write the instant you open it up. You might find this untrue, but I have lost a good amount of great ideas while I was fiddling with the settings of my memo app. When I finally figured out how to use the darn thing, the bird had chirped into another branch.

So for me, everytime I got an idea, I stopped whatever it is I am doing immidiately, and just grab my phone and write the sucker down. Got you! Just like now, when I was peeling the papayas, I wash my hands repeatedly just to write things down. If I wait until I was finished, I am sure three or four birds had flown away.

If you are interested in learning about these things, you might try reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done. It’s a book that started a new method of, well, getting things done, called GTD. I am an avid practitioner of the method, and it has tremendously helped me with getting the most out of my life.

Hopefully these tips will help you in some way. Catch those remarkable ideas. Maybe you could start by pooping a lot.