Contrary to popular advice, you don’t need to write down all of your ideas. In fact, it might be better if you don’t.

David Allen says, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” He says we should record our ideas in a “trusted system” so we don’t use conscious energy thinking about them, but we won’t “forget” them.

And we all do that, don’t we?

But there’s an argument that says we’re wasting our time.

The theory is, if you can’t remember an idea, it’s not the right idea for you. So instead of writing down your idea, forget about it. Turn it over to God or the universe or your subconscious mind.

If you never recall the idea, it probably wasn’t worth the grey matter it was written on.

The best ideas either stick with you or come back to you. In fact, when an idea is right, and the timing is right, you won’t be able to stop thinking about it.

As Victor Hugo put it, “Nothing else in the world… not all the armies… is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

Besides, when was the last time you checked your repository of ideas and actually used one?

It happens. But the best ideas don’t need you to find them, they find you.

You know that idea you can’t stop thinking about? Oh, you might get busy for a while and think about other things, but then suddenly, you remember it—and get excited.

Yeah, that idea. That’s the one you should run with.

Ideas come and go. But some ideas hang on. Your job is to listen. And when you can’t let go of an idea, wrap your arms around it and hold it close.

Until then, forget about it.

Writers say this a lot because they think a lot. They think about what they’re working on and how to improve it and they think about new ideas they might want to use. This is their process.

So when someone accuses them of goofing off, they might take offense. They know they are working—because they’re always working, even if they’re not putting more words on the page.

Hey lawyers, why can’t we do the same? Thinking is part of our process, too.

We don’t have to always do things people recognize as productive. We don’t have to get off our duff and call someone, write something, or review something.

We can stay on our duffs and think.

We can go for a walk or a drive, take a long bath, meditate, listen to music, or go outside and get some sun on our face, and let our brain do its thing.

No guilt. No justifying. No agenda. Just thinking.

Because thinking is working.

One suggestion, though. Make sure you have something with you to record your thoughts. You’ll want to see them again, to see what you thought and note what you thought about what you thought.

Throughout his life, Jim Rohn kept a journal. He said it wasn’t a diary, just “a place to record ideas”.

If you’ve ever had trouble keeping a journal, maybe you were asking too much of it. Maybe it would be easier and more valuable to you if you thought of it as simply a place to record ideas.

Because we both know you have a lot of them.

You’ve got a new case, project, business, or idea and you want it to be successful.

You create a plan—what you want to accomplish, the resources you’ll need, research to do, the first step and the steps after that. Your plan might be a simple list of tasks or ideas, but but the process of thinking it through and writing it down helps you clarify what you want and what you need to do to get it.

“Doing” is obviously the most important part. The actions you take and how well you do them are the mechanism that delivers your results.

Most of us do the first two well enough. We plan and we do. Where most people drop the ball, myself included, is with what we do after that.

Once we have some results, we need to review what happened.

Reviewing means:

• Noting the size and scope of the outcome. How many leads or subscribers, how many new clients, how much revenue? Did you hit the goal? Make a profit? Get what you expected?
• Thinking about the process. What did you do well, what could you have done better, what will you change?
• (Optional): Getting feedback from others. Talk to your client, staff, partners, and other stakeholders. What do they think about the process and the results? What suggestions do they have for the future?
• Using what you’ve learned to create a better plan or decide to kill the idea and try something else.

The review process might only take a few minutes, but it’s key to achieving sustained growth.

Plan, do, review. You need all 3.

“Don’t be a copycat,” our parents told us. But we didn’t listen, did we? We copied our friends, our siblings, our parents and teachers, and people we saw on TV.

If someone did something we thought was cool, we wanted to do it. If they didn’t die riding their bike down that steep hill that scared the beans out of us, we knew we wouldn’t die either.

I’m still here, aren’t I?

We wanted to be like others. Do what they do. So we copied them.

And we still do that today.

There’s nothing wrong with that. We learn by copying. Seeing what others do, how they do it, and how it turns out.

I did it again the other day.

I watched a video about GTD and the narrator said he does his daily planning every afternoon at 4 pm. He has a ten-minute appointment with himself posted on his calendar. I’ve always done my planning at the end of my workday, whenever that might occur, but hearing how this guy does it, I had to try it.

So now, don’t try to contact me at 4 pm. I’m busy.

He mentioned something else I liked. He schedules his weekly review on Fridays at 3 pm.

Why not, I thought?

I’ve been experimenting with different days for my weekly review. For a long time, it was every Sunday morning. I recently tried Saturday, but something about doing it Friday to close out the week (and keep my weekends open) appealed to me, so I’m doing that now.

It’s okay to be a copycat. But don’t copy blindly. Do what makes sense to you and for you.

If you hear about a lawyer who built his practice by sending unsolicited email and cold calling 12 hours a day, that’s one cat I wouldn’t copy.