My single most important creative habit

Isn’t it reassuring to know our younger selves can give our older selves the creative fuel we need? And all we need to do is start a note-taking habit.

This is where I keep my gold. In the pages of these notepads.

It’s the single most important creative habit I’ve kept up for the last fifteen years. Always having a notebook by my side. Usually a soft back lined pocket Moleskine. I write in these every single day, whether it’s an idea I’ve had over my morning coffee, a quote from something I’ve read or a list I’m working on.

I have an archive of forty to fifty notepads. In these pages I know there’s so much good stuff. If I’m struggling for ideas or inspiration I can open one of these at random and find so much: observations, ideas for projects and ventures, things to make me smile and bring me alive. That’s what I did last night, picking out a notepad from 2015 and finding so much there.

This habit is like laying down the breadcrumbs. It’s like the younger Ian has provided the 2025 Ian what he needs for creative sustenance. And you never know when it might come in handy. In the lockdown of 2020, this box of notepads gave me the raw materials for a book that became 365 Ways To Have a Good Day. Who knows what it will give me next?

So if you have a notetaking habit, please hang on to your notepads. Keep a shelf or a drawer full of them and in a couple of decades just think of the rich library of thoughts and ideas you’ll have collated!