It’s easy to put all of this kind of thing off. There are loads of things — both serious and small — that we end up doing first. This is more true for some people than others. People with caring responsibilities. People working two jobs. Lots of women. Sometimes, that is just what’s required, and that’s okay. But we can’t ignore the fact that we

A scrapbook is a collection. A mood board is a decision.

If you want to cultivate ideas, you need to let them stew. Your stew will be tastier if you let your attention drift into other areas of study, adjacent worlds where there might be concepts that will help you.

the best people at that job are always the ones that can get interested in any problem, no matter how tedious it seems on the surface. They don’t get drawn to the obviously cool problems — sport, tech, fashion, purpose — they get stuck into things that seem a bit boring — insurance, infrastructure, finance, logistics — and they find what’s

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Octavia E. Butler

I think what I tend to notice a lot are the conceptual connections between things and ideas that may otherwise go unnoticed. Whether it’s a big news story or a faint signal, I tend to see connections between that and something else — an event, or an idea or a happening that is seemingly unrelated. I’m trying to draw threads between, for instance,

Focus on something in the room you’re in. Just for a minute. Notice the patterns and the lack of patterns.

Noticing is good. Storing and remembering what you’ve noticed is great. It turns your noticing into research. You’ll remember more of what you’ve noticed. You’ll collide ideas together, which will multiply the value of everything. And you’ll learn something about yourself, your own passions and interests.

Max Delbrück was a Nobel laureate who studied physics and biology. He obviously believed that scientists should be careful and rigorous in their work. But he thought that a bit of looseness was helpful too, as it allowed room for the unexpected and accidental. He called this the Principle of Limited Sloppiness.