Jotting down ideas when they come

My brain is thinking about permaculture a lot of time, probably too much, but I guess it's a good thing to be thinking about.

A lot of the ideas my brain creates aren't any good, but some of them could have some potential. The problem is that I forget about them half of the time.

In order to try to remedy this, I've set up a place on my phone that I can jot down notes quickly and save them for later.

I've heard Sepp Holzer mention that he keeps a pen beside his bed, as a lot of the time he gets ideas in the middle of the night, and he immediately writes them down. I think both my body and mind shut down completely during sleep, so I probably won't have any epiphanies in the late night hours, but I'm going to have my phone ready at night too just in case.

I seem to get most of my best ideas in the late morning or early afternoon.

Do you have a method for taking down notes or ideas when you get them so you don't forget? Is there a certain time of day that you get the most or best ideas?

I have used my husband's cell phone to jot things down, on occasion, while walking around the property, but I really prefer good old fashioned pen and paper.  

I'm trying to get myself into the habit of keeping a tiny notebook and pencil with me when I'm out doing chores or projects on the property. Or especially when I'm just walking around. So many things jump out at me that by the time I get back to the house, I've probably forgotten 3/4 of them. Writing them down gives me at least a slender chance of prioritising and maybe it will help me work smarter instead of harder.

Like most people I keep the 'smart phone' nearby all the time.

So, when a thought pops to mind it gets saved in 'Notes' on the phone.

I usually leave it for a day or so to consider it more thoroughly. If it has merit, it gets emailed, added to an Excel spreadsheet, prioritised with other worthwhile proposals, then saved on an external HDD for record keeping.

Sure saves doubling up on things.

When I was doing my Farm Plan way back in 2007, I would keep a small note pad with me and a pen. As I went to work and thought of things, I would jot them down, and look them up online when I got home. I took a lot of grief because I planned for 10 months before I bought my starter flock of sheep, but found out, when I did as my Farm Plan originally said, things went well. When I did not, things did not work out. It really came down to following through with my research.

Today I really suggest to people getting into Homesteading to really plan out their farm plans before getting started. We often go by emotions instead of sound reasoning, and then quickly get overwhelmed. A farm plan allows people to think through problems, before they actually are problems. But few people listen to my suggestion.

When I'm stuck on a difficult idea, I get my solutions in the shower or in the middle of the night, guaranteed.
I keep notepads and pens everywhere. Even one out on the porch in the garden. For some reason my ideas don't want to go into my smartphone (I forget? I look at the phone and get distracted? I spend so much of my life looking at screens that my brain shuts down?). I think in the house I am literally 3 steps away from a notepad at all times.