Summary

The article emphasizes the importance of immediately recording ideas to foster endless creativity and achieve significant success, drawing on the practices of Taylor Swift and Larry David.

Abstract

The author argues that capturing ideas as they occur is crucial for sustained creative output, citing personal experience and the habits of successful figures like Taylor Swift and Larry David. Swift's method of jotting down lyrics and David's practice of noting down observations are presented as key strategies for ensuring that fleeting ideas are not forgotten. The author reveals having a substantial number of content ideas noted down, which has allowed for a continuous stream of articles without running out of material. The article encourages readers to adopt a similar approach to harness their creative potential and avoid the misconception of idea scarcity.

Opinions

The author believes that the ability to generate great ideas is not exclusive to geniuses but requires a system to capture and utilize them effectively.
It is suggested that the difference between those who struggle with content creation and those who thrive lies in the habit of writing ideas down immediately.
Taylor Swift's success is attributed to her discipline in recording ideas over time, which later contribute to her songwriting process.
Larry David's success in television is similarly linked to his consistent practice of writing down funny or interesting occurrences for future use in his shows.
The author asserts that ideas often come randomly and are not confined to moments of deliberate brainstorming, emphasizing the need for constant readiness to document them.
The article implies that the fear of running out of ideas is unfounded if one adopts the habit of recording thoughts and observations regularly.
The author advocates for the use of a notes app or a notebook to keep track of ideas, ensuring they are available when needed for creative projects.

1 crazy simple Taylor Swift trick for endless creativity and huge success

You don’t need to be a genius to come up with great ideas, but you do need to ensure your great ideas don’t go to waste.

I’m willing to bet you come up with an endless flood of amazing content ideas.

In fact, I think you’ve actually come up with more ideas in the past couple of months than you could ever realistically develop.

Yet the reason you’re reading this post may be that you *think* you’re struggling to generate new and interesting topics.

Whether you’re a writer here, a YouTuber, a musician, an artist, an actor, an animator — whatever — the problem you’re having actually coming up with awesome content ideas.

The difference between someone who says “I have nothing to write about” versus someone who says “I have too much to write about” actually comes down to one simple action — an action used by people you yourself might consider to be geniuses.

Great ideas are fleeting

You see, an idea is like a feather blowing in the wind.

It’s beautiful and it’s captivating, but if you don’t grab it as it passes by, it’ll be carried off on a gust, never to be seen again.

Put more simply: the moment an idea floats into your brain, you absolutely must write it down with ZERO delay.

Let me give you an example from my own life before I move on to people who are much smarter than me.

Back in September, I wrote this article about how I literally never run out of writing ideas.

That is not an exaggeration.

Too many ideas to use

At the time of that post, published seven months ago, I had written 50 articles and had 89 ideas in the notes app of my phone that I simply didn’t have time to get to.

Now, I’ve written close to 200 articles, so I’m outpacing the number of ideas I had at the time by a significant margin.

So I must be completely out of ideas at this point, right? I must be scraping the bottom of the barrel?

Absolutely not.

A quick check of my notes app here now shows that I have 259 (!) ideas waiting for attention.

I have so many ideas that some will never see the light of day.

This can be the reality for you too!

What ideas look like. Photo by Javardh on Unsplash

The Taylor Swift Method

Let us consider the musician Taylor Swift for a moment. Swift just became the first artist ever to hold all Top 10 spots on the Billboard 100 list.

Using that milestone as a jumping-off point, I wrote an article entitled Taylor Swift revealed the secret to monster career success.

In it, I went over an interview she did with Vogue Magazine in which she discussed consistency and enthusiasm and how it drives her success. If you’re interested, I suggest you check it out.

What I didn’t touch on then was another quote she gave to Vogue.

Here it is:

“I’ll get these lyric ideas and I’ll jot down a line in a notebook. When I’m writing an album in six months I’ll open up the notebook and pull out these clever lines.

“I had written those lines over the course of two years and I had just pulled them out when it came time to write the song. ‘I’m a nightmare dressed as a daydream’ — I remember coming up with that seven months before — let’s put that in right before the second chorus.”

What are the odds Swift would have remembered a specific line from seven months prior had she just been like, “huh, that’s pretty good,” and then went off to watch TV or something?

Almost zero.

And it became the most memorable line in a megahit song.

If Taylor Swift can’t remember every thought that passes between her ears without writing it down, what chance do you have?

Larry David’s notebook

In my previous article on this topic, I wrote about one of the greatest pop culture creators of all time — Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm founder Larry David.

Larry David is a TV genius the way Taylor Swift is a music genius, and one of his secret tactics is the same as Swift’s — he makes a point of writing everything down as it happens.

Here’s what I wrote:

In an interview with either Larry, Jerry (Seinfeld) or a writer on the show, the interviewee was talking about Larry’s infamous notebook.

He would carry around a notebook and a pen, and any time he would see something funny, interesting or out of the ordinary, he would write it down.

This would eventually come in handy on a show that needed a new episode every week.

Any time they would get stuck — either short on ideas for an episode or something about the structure wasn’t working — Larry would look to his notebook and there would be something to fill the gap.

All of a sudden the gang would run into George’s dad talking to a mystery man in a cape or something like that.

Larry wrote everything down as it happened and, if you want to capture your brilliant ideas, you should too.

Coming up with ideas is actually effortless. Most of mine show up randomly when I’m on a walk, doing the dishes, making food, or at the gym.

I’m really confident that you have more ideas than you think too!

Take it from me, Taylor, and Larry: all you have to do is write them down.

Now!

This article is an updated version of an earlier post.

Thanks for reading this piece all the way to the end! If you enjoyed it or found it useful, please give it some claps so others can find it!

Is this your last free Medium article? Subscribe today using my link ($5 a month, cancel any time) — I’ll get a lil’ kickback, and you’ll get all the awesome content Medium has to offer, risk-free!

My most-read stories

The latest from me

Get an email every time I publish so you don’t miss a story!