What Is Rick Rubin's Rule for Not Losing Ideas?

David Senra reads Rick Rubin's rule for never losing a valuable idea. The worry is that a great idea gets lost or overlooked in the spontaneity of a moment. Working with an artist, Rubin makes an endless amount of notes.

Outside observers often cannot believe how clinical the process looks. They imagine a big music party. The work constantly generates detailed notes on focus points and experiments to test for almost everything said, and someone is writing it down two weeks later. There comes a time when someone asks what lyric the group loved, what the previous version of an element was, or which take was the best for the fill. The group goes back to the notes.

Faithful note taking by a connected observer helps prevent special moments from getting lost in the churn of excitement.