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

[Stephen]

A combination of three things:

1. I store them in my head. Generally if I have (what I perceive to be) a good idea I won't forget it. In fact I'll dwell on it for days/weeks/months.

2. To Do list using a dead tree notepad. Generally this is a reminder or a 'call to action' for me to implement the idea(s). E.g.

* Order clown suit and paint the eggs.

3. Delicious. If I find something of interest on the web which sparks off an idea or enhances a pre-existing idea I'll save it straight into Delicious for future reference with a specific tag.

I've recently set up a 'To do' filter and label in Gmail. If I email myself with 'To Do' in the email title then a description of what I need to do, Gmail will automatically star and file it in the To Do folder. Once it's been done I un-star it.

The court's still out on that one though.

[Emily]

I think I am rather old fashioned on this one because I use the old grey matter to store ideas. Who was it that said the brain is a muscle and the more you exercise it the better it works?

If I come up with an idea that I can use at some point (and its good enough) it tends to stick in my head.

If I come up with an idea for someone else I will tend to email it to them and leave it to them to store it/remember it/use it. I use email simply because I had a BlackBerry for so many years and not all my colleagues and clients are on twitter/IM.

If someone else comes up with an idea (or says something that sparks something for me) it would usually be through twitter, email or a blog. My filing system isn't perfect, but I usually find a bit of brain racking and googling finds me what I wanted.

I loved the look of Evernote and just as soon as I fix my MMS I will be adding that to my repertoire, so I reserve the right to change my answer and stop exercising the grey matter very soon!

[Ged Carroll]

I use notes on my phone for an immediate save (I use a Nokia E90 for the notebook size screen on it) and Yojimbo by Bare Bones Software for notes and supporting materials.

I also an obsessive del.icio.us user, its one of the few products/services that I pr'ed at launch and persevered with

[Robin WIlson]

I tend to go for more of the old fashioned approach. Email myself and then store in a ideas file in email. Also, have a directory on the C drive with ideas. USe delicious for tagging things for research and reading.

[Melanie]

I use a good old fashion pen and paper for my ideas. They very rarely make it to a digital format, however, unless I'm writing a blog post about it (which I almost never do because about 2 hours after I look at said note, I decide it's silly and it goes to the wayside)