In fact, this method is quite popular as you can see from the zillions of options available for writers–from different notebook sizes, bindings, and paper types to different pen sizes, functions, and ink types. However, if you’re not so hooked on a phone or maybe you are actively trying to use your phone less, a notebook might also be a great idea. You can even use the dictation features to speak your ideas instead of having to type them out.
You might take out your phone out of habit to scroll Instagram, only to find a bunch of ideas pop into your head for you to write down first, as your mind starts to associate getting out your phone with capturing ideas. By connecting this new writing habit with an existing habit (checking your phone), the new habit is more likely to stick. If you’re used to taking out your smartphone frequently, it makes sense to try out an app for this kind of planning. The next main section will cover mind mapping, outlining, and other practices for this kind of work, but first a brief overview of tools and the various pros / cons of different choices. Again, if you write down these ideas more frequently, then the part of your mind working on this in the background will trust that it’s doing a good job and keep serving them up. If that’s not appealing at this point, you might also try just sitting down with a mind map or outline for five minutes 2 or 3 times a day for several days. One version of this might be to get a dedicated app for ideas on your phone or a small notebook and pen that you can carry around in your pocket. The key aspect to the kind of planning activity discussed in the previous section is being able to write down ideas frequently. You might even feel impressed looking at the ideas your past self made and improved over the planning period. You might feel more confident knowing that you’re not going to run out of ideas because there’s already a plan, even if it is a loose one. Sure, you could sweat it out from scratch the night before the deadline while staring at the assignment sheet in your dorm, but it might feel better to be rearranging 10 or 20 idea chunks you wrote down over the course of a few days earlier in the week. Once you get some practice with this kind of activity, you may be surprised at how straightforward the next parts of writing can feel. Mind map and outlining apps make it easy to move ideas around in chunks, so you can quickly reorder topic ideas or add some structure, making one idea a main category and another an example that fits into that category. That’s why it can be more efficient to use a mind map or outlining app rather than just a notes app where you can type. Often, these ideas don’t come to mind in any particular order and they might not always even be relevant. The more you can capture these throughout the day into your notes, the more ideas your mind will serve up. By creating a planning document you tell a part of your mind to get to work coming up with ideas and then you can just go about your day while it keeps churning things out. If you use an app on your smartphone, you can do this wherever you carry it–in line at the cafeteria, walking to class, on the bus. Every so often you take out your mind map or your notebook of ideas and add a few things that just popped into your head. This guide is based on the idea that most of the work of planning is done while you’re doing other things–walking around, eating a meal, talking with friends. If doing a little planning now could be made easy, and make things easier down the line, maybe that makes sense too. Or maybe a better idea for the middle section of the paper will come to you after you’ve written the whole paper, and it will seem like too much work to change things around to add it in. Maybe an idea for the next paragraph will come to you when you reach the end of the one you’re writing, but maybe it won’t. However, if you’re writing a longer essay or research paper, it’s likely that you don’t know what you want to say in every part yet.
You probably know exactly what you want to say when you open up the email app. When writing an email to a friend, it would seem silly to brainstorm a bunch of ideas first. You may have already dismissed activities like mind mapping and outlining as inefficient–why bother with extra tasks when you can just get started writing? For some writing tasks, this instinct makes sense. Luckily, there are a long list of activities one can try that help make the process feel more manageable. Getting started with a larger writing task can often feel like trying to climb a mountain in one step. Generating Ideas, Plans, and First Drafts