How do you save your ideas?

I have a colleague who has an email folder called Ideas. She puts interesting stuff in there for a future date. She doesn't use social media much, let alone to bookmark, or share stuff, but if it ain't broke don't fix it. My client @rossb82 showed me today why he prefers Google Reader to Bloglines or Firefox for his RSS feeds, and a lot of it seemed to be how he stores and shares ideas. Blogger Steve Rubel has been posting tonight about how he uses Gmail for all his ideas too. His method is a kind of super-user back to basics approach. Everything's on Gmail, but in a vary complex way. Take a look if you feel brave.

It got me wondering if the way I store and share my ideas is the right way?

Sharing: I use delicious, Twitter and blogs. I don't use Google Reader's shared items. I share pics on Flickr and Ffffound (forgive all the 33's!).
Storing: I have pages in my Moleskine for ideas, I tag and star emails in Gmail and use it as a a storage space because the seach is so good. I store pics in Ffffound and have private pics on Flickr. I also have private ideas saved on Delicious.

How does that look? Am I missing a trick or two? Would like to know what PR Geek, Emily, Ste and Paull think about ideas?

Comments

[Dan Leach]

I use Evernote as it allows me to access my thoughts wherever I am including my phone

[Amanda Rose]

I'm going to mention one specific thing I've been doing for years that is more about storing ideas I find.

I am a huge consumer of magazines (yes, those things in print). I devour food, fashion, travel, business, you name it. I love when I come across a page or an article that I particularly connect with or want to remember for future inspiration. But what ended up happening is that I'd have piles and piles of magazines with tabs until one day a friend asked if I was trying to create a new wall in my room. It was at this point that I realised there needed to be a better solution.

So what I've been doing for the last 7 years is when I tear out a page from a magazine, I take it and store it in a binder full of plastic sleeves created for that specific topic. Eventually I started dividing it into sections. My events binder for example has 'dinner party' 'conference' 'themes' - you get the idea. Now I don't have time to do this on a regular basis, so I usually just let it pile up and then spend a free Sunday afternoon to go through it. It has been a indispensable resource for ideas, that otherwise I would have never had the inclination to find again. Perhaps I should consider doing a digital version of this too.

[Will McInnes]

Loving Amanda's approach - that is a seriously cool asset you're building there :)

For me, I tag some things with 'inspirational' in delicious, but don't tend to use it, or email for ideas.

Ideas that come up for work I note down in a normal to-do list in a notebook, and then put into action as quickly as possible.

The sad bit though is other ideas: for me, as an entrepreneur, new business ideas. I have no time for these at the moment, so they wither and die. I'm looking forward to the day when I can execute many ideas.

I wonder if there's a limbo land or graveyard for good ideas?

[Drew B]

Thank you guys for your fab ideas ideas.

[Jon SIlk]

Hmm. Thanks for the tag, Drew. I'm considering an appropriate response...