The Note-Taking Practice Almost Everyone Overlooks
Most of my best insights don’t arrive on command.
They show up while walking. While lingering. While letting my curiosity wander without a plan.
I’ll be honest—that used to bother me. I thought good thinking required structure, intention, and efficiency. But over time, I’ve learned something quieter and far more generous:
The richest ideas often surface when you stop trying to extract them.
How an Idea Found Me
On one of my morning walks, I opened a familiar text—not hunting for anything in particular. I landed on a single line and stayed there longer than expected:
“Sing to the Lord a new song.”
Nothing exploded immediately. But something caught. Not the whole verse. Just one word.
New.
And instead of moving on, I stayed.
This is where deeper thinking usually begins—not with answers, but with attention.
The Discipline of Staying Put
We live in a culture that rewards speed:
Read faster
Move on quicker
Summarize
Optimize
But meaningful insight doesn’t respond well to pressure. It opens to presence.
So I lingered with the word new. I let it turn over slowly. I let questions surface instead of shutting them down.
And almost immediately, tension appeared.
Because there’s another well-known line that says something very different:
“There is nothing new under the sun.”
At first glance, those two ideas feel contradictory.
And this is usually the moment we rush past—choosing one, dismissing the other, or filing the tension away as “interesting but unresolved.”
But I’ve learned not to do that.
Don’t Resolve Tension Too Quickly
Here’s one of the most important practices in thinking deeply:
Sit with tension long enough for it to teach you.
Contradictions are often invitations—not errors.
So instead of flattening the tension, I stayed with it. And slowly, something began to emerge.
Newness Isn’t About Originality
Here’s the insight that finally crystallized:
A “new song” isn’t new because no one has ever heard it before.
It’s new because no one else can sing it from where you stand.
Newness doesn’t come from novelty. It comes from encounter.
From seeing something clearly for the first time. From letting an idea pass through your lived experience instead of staying abstract. From allowing meaning to take shape inside you before you try to share it.
A Few Practices I Keep Returning To
When I look back, this one line opened up because I practiced a few simple, repeatable habits:
We’re surrounded by information. But meaning still requires attention.
And sometimes the most faithful thing you can do—for your thinking, your creativity, your inner life—is to stop moving and let one idea finish its sentence.
You don’t need a new system.
You don’t need better inputs.
You don’t need to be more original.
You might just need to stay a little longer with what’s already caught your eye.
P.S. If this way of thinking resonates—lingering, noticing, letting tension do its work—that’s exactly why I created Ember. It’s a quiet space to sit with one idea at a time instead of rushing past it. No feeds. No pressure. Just room to think.
If you’re curious, you’re welcome to try it.