The tricky thing with ideas is that ideas are fleeting. You must capture then in the moment, or they are gone for good.

Let me tell you a story -

When I was a kid, I used to keep a dream journal. Every time I woke up, I’ve immediately written down the dreams I had that night. Before I started keeping the journal, I usually remembered just one dream – and that was if I was lucky. But just after couple of weeks of keeping the dream journal, I remembered at least 3 dreams every night, oftentimes even 5 or 6.

We all actually have multiple dreams every single night, but we simply don’t remember them. The reason for that is we pay no attention to them, so we don’t try to remember them. But if you don’t pay attention to your dreams at all, your brain then figures out: “Ah! Dreams are not important.” Your brain will then literally prevent you from remembering your dreams, and you will forget them before you fully wake up or right after that – for the sole reason you are not paying any attention to them.

I think that in many ways, ideas work pretty much the same as dreams. Great ideas are often created by our intuitive right hemisphere, which is also the hemisphere which dreams at night.

If you pay no attention to your ideas, you will get less of them. You will essentially close the idea pipe, and ideas will stop flowing to you.

The solution is rather simple – whenever you get a good idea, write it down immediately! This will help you to get more and more great ideas. And it doesn’t matter how you write or capture it.

Remember – ideas are fleeting. If you don’t write an idea down, you might lose it for good, just as you can forget a dream you had. Not only that, but the next, even better idea, won’t even come to you.

You can’t really capture too many ideas. The more ideas you capture, the more ideas you will get, and the better ideas you will get.

When I get an idea while on my Windows computer, I usually use the system-wide Ctrl + Alt + S hotkey to display Swift To-Do List, and capture the idea into my idea list. (I actually think it is very important to keep ideas separate from tasks – but I will talk more about that later, and moreso in my upcoming Swift Mind Freedom e-book). The to-do list tree in Swift To-Do List allows you to manage not just to-do lists, but also memos and lists. The latter two are perfect for storing ideas.

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How to get more great ideas is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

Step 1: Write your goal down

It all starts with the written intention to accomplish your goal. Incredible fact is that just writing your goal down will automatically make it more likely to be achieved. This step is crucial.

Swift To-Do List 7 is an ideal personal organizer application for organizing not just your goals, but also all tasks, notes and reminders associated with them.

Because every goal is a project, create a new to-do list for your goal in Swift To-Do List 7. The task list manager has various icons for your to-do lists that you can use to track and visually distinguish your goals. There is a target icon, and also flags in 4 colors and many other icons.

Good goals should excite you. They must have a heart. Your heart.

Step 2: How you can achieve it? Think it through.

Think deep and hard how will you achieve your goal. Use your imagination to visualize that the goal is already accomplished. How does it feel?

Play yourself a movie of you accomplishing the goal in your mind.

Write all your ideas and thoughts down.

Good goals should be measurable, concrete, and achievable. Measurable – that’s very important, because if there is a gray area where the goal can be considered achieved – or not, you will never know if you’ve already achieved your goal, and this will demotivate you.

Step 3: Ask yourself these questions:

1. Are you willing to pay the price?
2. Are you sure? Are you willing to accept all the consequences and responsibilities that come with your goal?
3. By looking at your past, is it likely that you will succeed? What could you do to change that?
4. Are you willing to start today? If not, then perhaps it won’t change tomorrow.
5. Do you honestly believe that you will succeed? If not, why not? And what could you do to ensure your success?

Again, write your answers and thoughts about your goal. In order to achieve it, you must believe it.

Step 4: Create action list

Fill your goal’s to-do list with with the key actions that you could do now. Look for the maximum pay-off. Write notes for each task where relevant.

Throw overwhelming force at your goal. Do everything in your power to ensure that you can achieve your goal.

Can you use recurring tasks? Reminders?

Can you create a habit around your goal? If you can develop a habit that will help you achieve your goal, and stick with it, then your success is guaranteed.

Step 5: Execute, track your progress and don’t give up

When you set the goal, you are likely going to be motivated and energized, and you might even start to work on your goal a little, but the hard part is not giving up.

This is where repeating reminders, or recurring tasks might come handy. Swift To-Do List 7 can repeatedly remind you of your goal. In fact, you can write a note to your future self. Write yourself a message about how you really want to achieve your goal, and how you want to keep up.

Now is the time to do the hard work. Good luck. Never give up, work as often as possible on your goal. Every little step in the right direction helps.

Don’t stop until you achieve it.

Change your environment to help you achieve your goal. Think about it – how could you modify your environment to enforce achievement of your goal? Perhaps you could post some post-it notes around for yourself. Or, for example, if you are trying to lose weight, you could throw-off the junk food from your fridge. Or, if you are trying to save money, you could place piggy-bank on your table. Do anything that will help you to stay on the right track!

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How to achieve your goals in 5 steps is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog