When do you get your ideas? I mean literally, in the middle of the night? During your work hours? While eating dinner with your family?

My husband snorts at me every time we’re in the car and I turn my purse inside out looking for my notebook. I’m usually in a panic to jot down the idea I just had- but that’s me; if I don’t get it down in a hurry, who knows if I’ll remember it later. (I quite possibly have memory issues…)

My ideas aren’t always directly tied to work- in fact, most of the time, they’re not. (I’m one of those who has to really step away from the monitor a few hours a day.) But if I try, I can steer them in that direction eventually. Last night, for example, I thought of a way to load our bikes in my truck for our upcoming trip to Colorado. It was perfect: didn’t require a rack, and still left room for all our luggage. But the thought came to me so quickly (mid-stride of my run, actually) and I was afraid it would leave just as fast. Like that damn roadrunner. One second he’s there, and the next second all you have is a trail of dust. Beep Beep. So I hopped off the treadmill and zoomed right on over to (you guessed it) my purse, which held my notebook. Took less than a minute. Back to my run, which was blissfully thoughtless.

So then later, as I was going through my notes, I came across my bike idea. I secretly marveled at how efficient it was. The way I was going to pack my truck left the most important items near either the front or the back- easily accessible, within arms reach. The voices (or words, rather, since the conversation happened online) of my co-workers rang in my head. We have a new feature to add to Jumpchart soon, but fitting it on the interface wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be. We didn’t want to just stuff this new feature anywhere. It was like packing my truck- it had to be accessible. Someone had mentioned a dropdown menu for this new thing, and as I realized I had found the most efficient way of packing, so had we found the most efficient way of adding this new feature.

While my “idea” wasn’t exactly a work revelation, or earth shattering by any means, it landed my opinion firmly on the dropdown as a solid option. Now I had something to add to the conversation.

When you think about it in terms of “when ideas hit,” nine to five is just a formality. We’re working all the time- whether we know it or not. Even as we’re going about living our personal lives, we’re scooping up experience, having conversations, meeting people, packing for trips, and learning new things that just might be relevant to something at work. The key is finding a cool way to put it all together.