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Ideas That Arrive and Fade

Created

A good thought can arrive in the shower whole and clear, and be gone ten minutes later. With no picture and no inner voice to hold it, I keep two words as a handle until I can write it down.

Panel one: a young East Asian man with short straight black hair stands in a tiled shower with water falling, eyes closed, a warm gold heart glowing on his chest as a good idea arrives. Panel two: the same man, wrapped in a towel outside the shower, concentrating as he quietly repeats something to himself, two fingers raised. Panel three: the same man at a small wooden bedside table, writing quickly in a notebook with a pencil, calm and relieved.

Where the good ones come​

I can quite easily have a thought in the shower that I think is quite good, and then forget it.

The shower is where many of my best ideas arrive. My mind is relaxed, nothing is asking for my attention, and connections show up on their own. They come the way all my thinking comes: as a feeling and a concept, not a picture and not a sentence (more in What It Is Like). And the shower is also the one place I cannot write anything down.

Why they fade​

For someone who can picture things, a thought often leaves something behind: an image of the scene, a sentence they said to themselves. They can go back to it and pull the idea out again.

I do not get that. The idea is a feeling of understanding, and when the feeling passes, there is nothing left to go back to. No image to replay, no voice to repeat it. That is why it can be nerve-wracking. I know the thought was good, I can feel that I had something, and I know it is slipping while I stand there.

Two words per thought​

So I do something simple. When a thought arrives and I cannot write, I squeeze it down to two words and hold onto those. Not the idea, just a handle for it. If three ideas come, I carry six words. When I am out, I write the words down first, before anything else, and then try to unfold each one.

Sometimes I remember. The two words come back and the whole idea opens up again. Sometimes I do not. Sometimes the words survive and I have no idea what they meant, and sometimes the words are gone too. I have made peace with that. Two words save far more than zero, and zero is what "I'll remember" gets me.

The same principle as everything else​

This is hyper-documenting at its smallest scale. My memory does not hold things on its own, so I give it the least it needs to get back to the thought, and then I get the thought into the record as fast as I can. Assume you will forget, and build around it.

If you have aphantasia, try it next time something good arrives at a bad moment. Pick two words. Say them a few times. Write them down the moment you can. And if your best thoughts keep coming in the same place, make that place easier: a phone within reach for a voice memo, or a waterproof notepad on the shower wall.

Further Reading​