Ideas can strike at any time. Ideas that improve your real estate business. Or your life. Those ideas don’t do any good, however, if you forget them. Same with ‘to do’s’ or other stuff you need to remember.
It never seems to be a good time when ideas pop into your head. You may be taking a shower, driving your car or talking to someone. They never seem to hit when you are ready with pen and paper or computer.
How do you capture these ideas? Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘one size fits all’ piece of technology to note your idea down when it comes. Probably because there are so many ideas and situations when ideas come up.
So in this lesson, we’re gonna run through a bunch of tools that can capture your ideas.
Simple Note Taking Apps
It might not seem that convenient to just have idea-capture applications on your computer. Sitting in front of your laptop is not the normal time that ideas come to you and you’re not sitting at your computer all day long. But many of these applications can also be used on other devices.
Take Captio for instance. This is an extremely simple app that you just activate and type. Voila – instant idea capture. Generally, you don’t need much more than that.
Once you finish jotting down your idea, you can hit send and it will automatically send it to your email. Because this app is so simple, it is also really fast. Just tap the app on your iPhone or iPad, and the screen comes right up.
No time to forget the idea.
For Android, check out Color Note. This app is great for recording notes, to-do lists, checklists or other stuff you need to remember. It’s absolutely free. A simple app like this can really help you remember things when you’re out in the field wholesaling, renting or flipping.
Another app that really helps your Mac is Quicksilver. Besides all the functionality, Quicksilver gives you to run your Mac; it also allows you to append (or ‘prepend’) text to any text file you have without having to open the file.
If you have a list for your next trip to a big box hardware store, for example, you can quickly add something else to it that you just remembered.
PC users can download an open-source program called Launchy that functions in a very similar way that Quicksilver does for Mac.
Once you have Launchy, you can set it up to append ideas to text files on your computer. It may take a little technical knowledge to do it, but here is an article that shows you how.
While you are at your computer, internet surfing can prove to be an idea generator as well. An app called Annotate can let you do a screen capture and then edit it the way you want. This is great for showing other people your ideas – and putting notes all over them.
One useful feature of Annotate is the ability to highlight some areas of your screenshot, while hiding other areas. If you have a document with sensitive information such as a rental application with a Social Security Number, you can show the release authorization and still hide the SSN.
Annotate works well on Apple, but it doesn’t work for Android. Android has a security feature that will not let outside apps access to what is on the screen. Android doesn’t want some malicious app looking at your screen when you are pulling up your banking information.
In order to be able to capture your screen like Annotate, you will need to root your Android. Once that is done, there are many screen capture apps on Google Play that will allow you to capture an idea from your screen.
Speak Your Text, Let the App Do the Rest
Sometimes you just can’t type a note or idea. You may be driving the car, or just don’t feel like typing. There’s a neat app called Voice2Note that will let you speak your idea and record it.
Once it has the recording, Voice2Note will transcribe it and save it to your Evernote account. You can even say at the end of your note “Tag With” and it will add the right tag to the account. The tag will help you locate the note in Evernote much faster.
Voice2Note has a free version that will only allow you to record up to 5 notes a month. For all you REM idea machines out there, you can pay $29/year or $2.99/month to have unlimited notes and transcriptions. The tagging only comes with the paid version as well.
Got an Idea?
Do you have any tips for keeping track of ideas? Share below.
Capture Your Ideas – Ideas are what change the world. Even if you just carry around a notebook, find a way to stop forgetting them.
Flex Your Idea Muscle – If you don’t consciously try to come up with ideas on a regular basis, it will be harder and harder to transform your business.
Run Problems by Others – Don’t just rely on yourself for ideas. Talk to other people for new ways to look at your business.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.