Keep a scrapbook. In the long-ago pre-Internet days, I took notes and wrote drafts in a small spiral notebook. Flipping back through the pages of those old journals, I find newspaper articles, advertisements, photographs, napkins with sketches, and an assortment of other material taped to the pages. Most of my writing, drafting, and collecting happens in digital spaces now, and there are good tools like Pocket, Evernote, and Keep to store the memorabilia of intellectual travels. The difference is that the digitized content is all flat, all similar, and has no shape to it. The shape and feel of the inspiring or nostalgic artifact can be evocative, reminding us viscerally of both the questions and the answers. Artist and author Austin Kleon has written quite a lot about keeping a notebook in a similar and beautifully creative process. You can read a blog post about one of his recent notebooks here.
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