Think fast. File slow.

Ideas don’t wait for a good moment. They turn up on a walk, halfway through a call, or while you’re doing something else. If writing one down means choosing a folder, a template and some tags, you probably won’t bother.

So capturing has to cost almost nothing. Otherwise you only keep what looks important at the time, and that’s a bad filter. The half-thought you skipped on Tuesday afternoon is often the one you want the week after.

Use whatever’s to hand, a voice memo or a photo of the whiteboard. Anything without an obvious home goes into one inbox. It can be messy. Its job is to hold things until you have time to look.

Then file in one go, once a week, when you’ve got the context. Move what matters to where it belongs and link it up. Plenty of it won’t need filing at all, so delete it.