Stop wasting water and be where your hands are
Joan Bell made an excellent point in a comment on my post about the shower thinkers. Living in Australia where there is a much more urgent focus on conservation and environmental responsibility, her first concern was for the wasted water while you stood there jotting down your ideas on the AquaNotes.
And actually, I realized there's another group who wouldn't be too impressed with the whole notion of AquaNotes, and those are proponents of mindfulness. If you're in the shower, be in the shower. Or like one of my mentors reminds me, "Be where your hands are."
And after all, on some busy days, the shower is probably as close as most of us will get to a spa treatment - so why not "soak it in" and enjoy the moment?
Be brief with your idea catchers
Using an idea catcher is not about drafting your whole article as soon as you think of the idea. It's about capturing enough of it so that you will remember the inspiration later when it IS time to flesh it out.
That's where Twitter has become such a great training tool for brevity. I even find myself composing and revising what I'm going to write down on my idea catcher before I do it, challenging myself to use as few words as possible.
So practice brevity with your idea catchers - you'll save water, write more articles and be a better Tweeter!
I was listening to a silly radio ad about winter tires the other day, and it reminded me of a very common (but sometimes forgotten) article opener - the definition.
A definition is helpful when you're using a phrase your readers may not be familiar with (as I defined the term plain language in this blog post), but it's also an interesting way to start any article.
Often we use the same words over and over again and start making assumptions about what they mean, and how they apply to us. So try giving your readers the gift of a fresh perspective on a well-used term.
Here are some definitions that might be interesting to explore: