Empty the notebook

As a college student, most of my internships, as well as my career aspirations, revolved around sports journalism. One baseball writer I met talked about periodically “emptying” his notebook.

The idea is simple: There are times you don’t have any one big idea or story, but if you’re doing this stuff right, you should constantly collect stuff. That stuff doesn’t need to be profound, and it’s probably not, either. It’s little tidbits, story threads, stats you heard, links to interesting stuff, phrases or pithy maxims that pop to mind.

The idea backlog, i.e. the notebook, is far more valuable than the ideas themselves. The practice of saving anything and everything that lights us up or sparks curiosity is what leads to work that, eventually, is worth our time and others’ attention.

When the ideas aren’t coming, or you’re stressed but still want to create, don’t overthink it. Sometimes, to get started, or bridge the gap, all we need to do is empty the notebook.