Some of my best ideas come to me when I’m out walking the dog. But, that’s usually when I don’t have a voice recorder or notebook to hand. Occasionally, I will have my phone with me, but I’ll usually be listening to a podcast on that and it’s such a cheap Samsung model that I cannot pause the podcast, use the inbuilt voice recorder, and then go back to the same spot in the podcast so I never bother. Instead, and here’s the tip, I use an Air Voice Recorder.

I pretend to use a voice recorder in other words and describe the idea out loud as if I were taking audio notes. It works a treat. The idea somehow sticks so that by the time the dog and I get back home, it’s still fresh in my mind and I can make a permanent digital record. Try it, it works a treat, the act of saying the idea out loud must lock into some useful memory functions in the brain. Works even better if you do it with a funny accent, although you get some odd looks from other dog walkers and they tend to give you a wide berth next time they see you.

Check out Pureblogging for some more traditional tips.

In next week’s SQT (Saturday QuickTip) I let you in on the secret of anonymous emails