Capturing Ideas in the Shower / Cameron Moll / Designer, Speaker, Author

Capturing Ideas in the Shower

published 1 July 2010

Two sizes of dive slates, as displayed in my shower.

I’ve written before about showering as an ideal model for creative pause—minimal distraction, mental freedom, and a change of scenery. What I haven’t written about is how to capture what comes of the pause. Inspiration is elusive and fleeting, and if it isn’t captured when it comes, it’s often gone for good.

For the past few months, I’ve kept a dive slate in my shower. These are typically used by instructors during scuba training or to capture notes on a dive. They’re not much more than a sheet of plastic and pencil that’s nearly the same as those provided at golf courses, except with a clear plastic wrapping. The slates are fully waterproof, making them an ideal instrument for capturing notes in a wet environment.

It may sound silly, but the slate in my shower has proved invaluable during a few occasions when I needed to capture an idea as soon as it occurred. At times these ideas were sketches, at other times written notes. Whatever the case, I’ve been able to capture the thought immediately and reference it later at my desk.

You can find dive slates at Scuba.com and Amazon, as well as a host of other online stores. The ones shown in the photo above are the small and jumbo sizes offered by Scuba.com. (Also consider purchasing carbonate-based dive slate cleaner, as the writing can be a challenge to remove with only soap and water.)

Call me crazy, but I’m not one to let ideas slip away. And until iPhone 5 is waterproof, this will have to do.